Thursday, October 2, 2008

Supreme Court decisions...

Other than Roe v. Wade, Sarah Palin could name no Supreme Court decision with which she disagreed.

I am not a Supreme Court scholar, but I can, off the top of my head, think of two decisions which I am happy have now been overturned:
Dred Scott v. Sandford ... was a decision by the United States Supreme Court that ruled that people of African descent imported into the United States and held as slaves, or their descendants — whether or not they were slaves—could never be citizens of the United States, and that the United States Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery in federal territories.

Plessy v. Ferguson ... is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in the jurisprudence of the United States, upholding the constitutionality of racial segregation even in public accommodations (particularly railroads), under the doctrine of "separate but equal".

[Wikipedia entries]
Charles Houston spent his career building the legal foundation on which to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson, eventually leading to Brown v. Board of Education.

Have a nice day.

2 comments:

  1. The Dred Scott decision has not been reversed (decisions are reversed not overturned) it still stands. The basis of the decision was on property rights. A citizen does not lose their ownership of property by crossing state lines. It was unfortunate that the property in question was a slave, and the issue of a human being property was settled by the 13th amendment. When cross state lines all your property stays yours and other states cannot pass laws to strip you of that property and Dred Scott set the precedent for this.

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  2. Thanks for the clarification, PM!

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