Associate Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer talked about one of the most infamous Supreme Court verdicts in American history, the 1857 case of Dred Scott v. Sandford. The ruling that all blacks, both slave and free, could not become citizens of the United States, pushed the nation closer to the brink of civil war. In his lecture Justice Breyer focused on the players, the politics, and the perturbations of the case whose ramifications still cast a long shadow on questions of how the Court interprets the Constitution.
Justice Breyer’s lecture, “Guardian of the Constitution: The Counter Example of Dred Scott” was part of the New York Historical Society Bernard and Irene Schwartz Distinguished Speakers Series, presented at the New York Society for Ethical Culture.