Friday, March 02, 2007

Constitutional Evil?

The Northern Kentucky Law Review hosted a symposium today at Cincinnati's National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. My Constitutional law professor was on one of the panels, so his students were "strongly encouraged" to attend (there will be a question on the final.)

I found the whole thing fairly interesting. The panelist opposite my professor was a professor from the University of Maryland named Mark Graber. Graber hypothesizes that the Dred Scott decision, one of the most reviled Supreme Court decisions, was decided rightly given the time and the state of the law at that time. While I'm not sure I can agree with him (I haven't read his book yet, so I'm not entirely clear on what all of his points are), he raises an interesting point.

(For non law-types, Dred Scott was decided in 1857 and held that African Americans had no right to sue in federal court and also held that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional.)

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