what were the three parts of the supreme courts decision in the dred scott case?

Answer 1

The decision was a culmination of what many at that time considered a push to expand slavery. The expansion of the territories and resulting admission of new states meant that the longstanding Missouri Compromise would cause the loss of political power in the North as many of the new states would be admitted as slave states. Thus, Democratic party politicians sought repeal of the Missouri Compromise and were finally successful in 1854 with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which naturally ended the "compromise." This act permitted each newly admitted state south of the 40th parallel to decide whether to be a slave state or free state. Now, with Dred Scott, the Supreme Court under Taney sought to permit the unhindered expansion of slavery into the territories.

Although Taney believed that the decision would settle the slavery question once and for all, it produced the opposite result. It strengthened the opposition to slavery in the North, divided the Democratic Party on sectional lines, encouraged secessionist elements among Southern supporters of slavery to make even bolder demands, and strengthened the Republican Party.

Answer 2

Legally, the decision only constituted one part, whether or not blacks were considered US Citizens.

The court ruled that no; blacks were not citizens and thus did not have the required legal standing to sue in US federal court and the case was dismissed for lack of standing.

Everything else was just legal dicta(further clarification come up by the court but ones that are not considered legally binding)

These included:
Whether Dred Scott was a free man or a slave.
Whether Congress had the power to restrict slavery from national territories.

They stated that Scott was still a slave, which isn't saying much, because once his standing had been revoked, the highest court to hear his case(the Missouri Supreme Court) had ruled him as still being a slave.

As to whether Congress had the power to legislate in the territories, Taney just came up with a bunch of lies to justify his decision. He wanted to be seen as a great man who solved the slavery issue once and for all, instead he is seen as not only a fool, but a bad attorney and jurist.

Obviously, under the USC, article 8, section 1, clause 1:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes ... and "provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States;"

In addition, under what is commonly known as the Territorial Clause of the Constitution(art IV, section 3, clause 2 "the Congress has the “power to make all needful Rules and
Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property” of the United States"

Finally, according to Taney, the US Congress had never taken action showing jurisdiction over the US Territories, again, he flat out lied, it happened numerous times starting with the 1st Congress and wass called the Northwest Ordinance, which created the northwest territories(now the midwest) and established this area as a FREE territory and any states that would develop from the territory were to be without slavery.

His decision was a bad one morally and legally, because he did not follow the USC itself, and attempted to end the slavery question once and for all, in favor of slave owners.

whale

Answer 3

To enable the U.S. Supreme Court to clarify to what degree, if at all, a state court could reverse the “once free, always free” principle, Scott's lawyers began a new suit, Dred Scott v. John F. A. Sandford, in the federal courts. (Through a clerical error, Sanford's name was misspelled in the court records.) Scott could have appealed directly from the Missouri Supreme Court to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the recent precedent of Strader v. Graham (1851) might have enabled the U.S. Supreme Court to endorse the state court decision without considering its merits. Mrs. Emerson's brother was named defendant because his New York residency made a federal diversity‐of‐citizenship case possible.

Sanford's attorneys injected additional issues into the federal litigation, including Scott's ability to sue in a federal court, raising the issue of a black person's claim to be a citizen of the United States. Equally troublesome was their proslavery challenge to the constitutionality of the 1820 Missouri Compromise. The power of Congress to forbid slavery in the territories had been long established but Sanford's attorneys now argued the extreme proslavery doctrine that slaves were private property protected by the United States Constitution and, therefore, that Congress could not abolish slavery in the territories. The issue was no longer whether Missouri could remand Dred Scott to slavery, but rather whether he had ever been free at all. So controversial and delicate were the issues that the Supreme Court requested parties to argue twice, a most unusual procedure, in February 1856 and again the following December.

At first it appeared that judicial restraint would prevail (see Judicial Self‐Restraint). With Strader v. Graham as a precedent, the Court was prepared to confirm the Missouri high court as having the final word on its own state law, with no need for the United States court to explore the merits separately. Justice Samuel Nelson was designated to write a Court opinion that would thus avoid any controversial, substantive slavery questions.

But the momentous forces of the time pressured the Court to resolve judicially what political institutions had been unable to do. Justice James M. Wayne of Georgia proposed that a new Court opinion deal with the issues that had until then been sidestepped. Though Wayne made the specific proposal, responsibility falls also on Chief Justice Roger B. Taney and Associate Justices John McLean, Benjamin R. Curtis and Peter V. Daniel. In conference a bare majority of five justices, all from slave states, approved the Wayne proposal, and Taney wrote a new opinion for the Court. Delivered on 6 March 1857, it became famous (or infamous) as the Dred Scott decision.

In its decision the Court divided 7 to 2 along ideological lines. Taney's opinion for the Court declared Scott to be still a slave for several reasons. First, although blacks could be citizens of a given state, they were not citizens of the United States having the concomitant right to sue in federal courts. Scott's suit was therefore dismissed because the Court lacked jurisdiction. Second, aside from not having the right to sue, Scott was still a slave because he had never been free in the first place. Congress exceeded its authority when it forbade or abolished slavery in territories because no such power could be inferred from the Constitution. Furthermore, slaves were property protected by the Constitution. The Missouri Compromise was accordingly declared invalid. Finally, whatever the status of an erstwhile slave might have been in a free state or territory, if the slave voluntarily returned to a slave state, his or her status there depended upon the law of that state as interpreted by its own courts. Since Missouri's high court had declared Scott to be a slave, that was the law that the U.S. Supreme Court would recognize.