No — CASA v. Trump Isn’t a ‘Return to the Constitutional Horrors of Dred Scott’
Quite the opposite; the dissent would have made the judiciary the strongest branch, based on the slimmest of reeds
By Andrew R. Arthur on July 2, 2025
AJune 30 op-ed in the D.C. outlet The Hill is headlined “The Supreme Court’s injunctions decision returns America to the constitutional horrors of Dred Scott”. It argues that the June 27 majority opinion in Trump v. CASA, by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, is redolent of Chief Justice Roger Taney’s infamous 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford, which denied citizenship to black Americans and pushed the country toward Civil War. In fact, CASA puts the kibosh on the sort of judicial activism the majority opinion in Dred Scott embodied.
Dred Scott. For those unfamiliar, here’s a quick summary of Dred Scott.
The Supreme Court considered a suit brought by plaintiff Scott, who was enslaved in Missouri but who had lived in the free state of Illinois and in a section of the Louisiana Territory where slavery was outlawed by the Missouri Compromise of 1820, seeking his freedom.
The Court framed the key issue facing the justices thusly:
The question is simply this: Can a negro, whose ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves, become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States, and as such become entitled to all the rights, and privileges, and immunities, guarantied [sic] by that instrument to the citizen? One of which rights is the privilege of suing in a court of the United States in the cases specified in the Constitution.
https://cis.org/Arthur/No-CASA-v-Trump-Isnt-Return-Constitutional-Horrors-Dred-Scott
