In an opinion written by Chief Justice Roger Taney, the Court ruled that people of African descent "are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word 'citizens' in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States". In March 1857, the Supreme Court issued a 7–2 decision against Scott. federal court, which ruled against him by deciding that it had to apply Missouri law to the case. Scott sued first in Missouri state court, which ruled that he was still a slave under its law. territory, he had automatically been freed and was legally no longer a slave. When his owners later brought him back to Missouri, Scott sued for his freedom and claimed that because he had been taken into " free" U.S. The decision involved the case of Dred Scott, an enslaved black man whose owners had taken him from Missouri, a slave-holding state, into Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory, where slavery was illegal. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes called it the Court's "greatest self-inflicted wound". Legal scholar Bernard Schwartz said that it "stands first in any list of the worst Supreme Court decisions". The decision is widely considered the worst in the Supreme Court's history, being widely denounced for its overt racism, perceived judicial activism and poor legal reasoning, and for its crucial role in the start of the American Civil War four years later. Constitution did not extend American citizenship to people of black African descent, and thus they could not enjoy the rights and privileges the Constitution conferred upon American citizens. (19 How.) 393 (1857), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that held the U.S. Taney, joined by Wayne, Catron, Daniel, Nelson, Grier, Campbell
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