Fehrenbacher, a Lincoln biographer and professor of history at
Stanford, has written a masterfully researched legal-historical
account of the Dred Scott decision - a work long overdue
considering the implications of the 1857 Supreme Court ruling that
invalidated the Missouri Compromise's restrictions on slavery and
maintained that Negroes were not citizens. Still, some will find
the book overlong. Ostensibly writing on Dred Scott, the author
devotes one-fourth of the work to an overview, from 1619 to 1857,
of slavery, slave law, and territorial expansion. Here,
Fehrenbacher's stimulating insights on such matters as the Wilmot
Proviso are partial compensation. When he finally comes to Court,
few details are left out. In substance, Fehrenbacher convincingly
contends that Chief Justice Taney's majority opinion, negating
major federal legislation and seeking to resolve a major political
crisis, anticipates the judiciary's law-making or crisis-resolution
function during the era of the Warren Court. Chief Justice
Marshall, the author notes, had upheld judicial review, but had
never ruled major federal laws unconstitutional. The rest of
Fehrenbacher's findings are less broad. Unlike many historians, he
persuasively minimizes the decision's effect on the political
parties or Lincoln's election, and as a cause of the Civil War.
Although Taney's reputation has been rehabilitated in this century,
Fehrenbacher portrays him as a bitter polemicist who died in 1864
still sympathetic to slavery and Southern secession. Hated at the
time of his death, Taney nevertheless failed to destroy the Court's
reputation. We have then, finally, the definitive account, often
exhausting, yet generally worth the struggle. (Kirkus Reviews)
Studies this famous case of judicial failure, and discusses the legal bases of slavery, the debate over the Constitution, and the dispute over slavery and continental expansion.
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