Dred Scott Decision: Supreme Court Rules Black People Have No Rights

Chief Justice Roger Taney's opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford declared that Black people — free or enslaved — were not citizens under the Constitution and had 'no rights which the white man was bound to respect.' Taney ruled the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, declaring Congress had no power to ban slavery from any territory, effectively making slavery legal everywhere in the United States. The decision invalidated all Northern personal liberty laws protecting free Black residents. Taney explicitly stated that the framers had intended Black people to be 'a subordinate and inferior class of beings.' The ruling was the most consequential judicial endorsement of white supremacy in American history.