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Dred Scott V. Sandford

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When Dred Scott v. Sandford was decided in 1857, it made an enormous impact on the United States. It riled up both pro- and anti-slavery Americans. It angered many Americans in an extreme example of judicial activism. Some say it made the Civil War inevitable. By the time the dust had settled and the 13th and 14th Amendments reversed the Court’s decision, Dred Scott could be considered one of the worst Supreme Court decisions of all time. And yet, although the case was egregiously wrong, it still can be considered a “great case”. As Dred Scott exemplifies, a case does not have to be good in order to be “great”. Some of the most important “great cases” are also some of the most terrible cases. Our panel would thus prefer to call the cases that fit Mr. White’s definition “significant cases” rather than “great cases”, because “great” generally implies a value judgment along with its judgment on significance, and in generalizing the idea of a “significant case”, value judgments are typically not consistent. There are significant cases that are great, and significant cases that are the opposite of great. Dred Scott is a significant case but not a great one. With that clarification in mind, the Dred Scott decision does fit Mr. White’s definition of a significant case, at least in part. There are three main prongs of this definition, each of which applies to the Dred Scott case: first, a significant case asks the court to resolve a deeply contested issue; second, the court decides

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