Florida’s Governor says the worst Supreme Court decision in history is one that preceded and ultimately caused the Civil War.
During remarks in New Hampshire, Ron DeSantis said 1857’s Dred Scott v. Sandford stood out as the most egregious ruling in the history of the High Court.
“It denied the basic humanity of Dred Scott. It was instrumental, of course, in leading to the Civil War. I know there’s not everyone that is willing to admit that anymore, but that’s just the reality.”
The Governor made the remarks in Manchester at an event hosted by the Never Back Down super PAC.
The Supreme Court’s 7-2 decision was rooted in the argument that Scott, an enslaved Black man who was taken from a slave state to a free state, lacked standing to sue, even though he’d been moved to territory where slavery was illegal.
Chief Justice Roger Taney, an Andrew Jackson appointee who came from a slave-holding family in Maryland, used the case as a pretext to overturn the Missouri Compromise, allowing slavery in the territories and giving slaveholders the presumption of elastic property rights.
DeSantis asserted that the decision not only divested Scott of his human rights, but saw SCOTUS exceed its prerogative.
“Not only was it wrong, not only was it dehumanizing, it was massive judicial activism. That was not what the Constitution said, that was not what the Founding Fathers envisioned when they created the Constitution. And so they were taking their judicial power and they were trying to ‘solve’ an issue that they had no right to legislate on,” DeSantis said, calling it an example of the High Court “not only getting the law wrong, but also abandoning their entire role under the Constitution.”
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