Dred Scott v. Sandford: Dred Scott v. Sandford, List 2

On March 6, 1857, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney delivered the majority opinion in the Dred Scott Case. Scott, a slave, had been brought from a slave territory to a free territory and demanded his freedom. The Court ruled that as an enslaved person, Scott was not a citizen and could not sue in the courts. The decision further polarized the North and the South and ended any chance of compromise. This pro-slavery Supreme Court decision illuminates how the issue of slavery brought the nation to the brink of the Civil War. Read the full text here.
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. traffic
    buying and selling, especially illicit trade
    He was bought and sold and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic whenever a profit could be made by it.
  2. spurious
    plausible but false
    It is entitled "An act for the better preventing of a spurious and mixed issue," ...
  3. moiety
    one of two approximately equal parts
    ...nor shall any person, duly authorized to solemnize marriage, presume to join any such in marriage, on pain of forfeiting the sum of fifty pounds; one moiety thereof to her Majesty, for and towards the support of the Government within this province, and the other moiety to him or them that shall inform and sue for the same, in any of her Majesty's courts of record within the province, by bill, plaint, or information.
  4. indelible
    not able to be forgotten, removed, or erased
    The unhappy black race were separated from the white by indelible marks, and laws long before established, and were never thought of or spoken of except as property, and when the claims of the owner or the profit of the trader were supposed to need protection.
  5. void
    lacking any legal or binding force
    The law last mentioned was passed in October, 1788, about nine months after the State had ratified and adopted the present Constitution of the United States, and, by that law, it prohibited its own citizens, under severe penalties, from engaging in the trade, and declared all policies of insurance on the vessel or cargo made in the State to be null and void.
  6. manumit
    free from slavery or servitude
    The term free inhabitant, in the generality of its terms, would certainly include one of the African race who had been manumitted.
  7. enjoin
    issue an injunction
    No other court could have enjoined him, for certainly no State equity court could interfere in that way with the judgment of a Circuit Court of the United States.
  8. liberal
    not strictly literal or exact
    No one, we presume, supposes that any change in public opinion or feeling, in relation to this unfortunate race, in the civilized nations of Europe or in this country should induce the Court to give to the words of the Constitution a more liberal construction in their favor than they were intended to bear when the instrument was framed and adopted.
  9. abrogate
    revoke formally
    Any other rule of construction would abrogate the judicial character of this court, and make it the mere reflex of the popular opinion or passion of the day.
  10. remand
    refer a matter or legal case back to another authority
    And in a writ of error to a Circuit Court of the United States, the whole record is before this court for examination and decision, and if the sum in controversy is large enough to give jurisdiction, it is not only the right, but it is the judicial duty of the court to examine the whole case as presented by the record; and if it appears upon its face that any material error or errors have been committed by the court below, it is the duty of this court to reverse the judgment and remand the case.
Created on Tue May 27 11:38:27 EDT 2025

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