Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil

by Mark A. Graber

• ISBN13: 9780521728577
• ISBN10: 0521728576
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-03-31
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil concerns what is entailed by pledging allegiance to a constitutional text and tradition saturated with concessions to evil. The Constitution of the United States was originally understood as an effort to mediate controversies between persons who disputed fundamental values, and did not offer a vision of the good society. In order to form a 'more perfect union' with slaveholders, late-eighteenth-century citizens fashioned a constitution that plainly compelled some injustices and was silent or ambiguous on other questions of fundamental right. This constitutional relationship could survive only as long as a bisectional consensus was required to resolve all constitutional questions not settled in 1787. Dred Scott challenges persons committed to human freedom to determine whether antislavery northerners should have provided more accommodations for slavery than were constitutionally strictly necessary or risked the enormous destruction of life and property that preceded Lincoln's new birth of freedom.

Table of Contents

The Lessons of Dred Scott

The Dred Scott decision

Critiques of Dred Scott

Critiquing the critiques

Injustice and constitutional Law

The Constitutional Politics of Slavery

The slavery compromises revisited

The compromises and constitutional development

The Constitutional Order modified: 1820-1860

The constitution and the civil war

Compromising with Evil

Majoritarianism and constitutional evil

Contract, consent, and constitutional evil

Constitutional relationships and constitutional evil

Voting For John Bell

Lincoln v. Bell

Constitutional justice or constitutional peace

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