International Law Blog Postings

One hundred fifty years ago today, on March 6, 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court held in the Dredd Scott decision that slaves "imported into this country" were not U.S. citizens and thus could not claim the rights and privileges of citizenship, including access to justice through the courts. The decision denied Scott, as well all African-American slaves and their descendants, the legal means to challenge their status as slaves and to request their freedom. The Dredd Scott decision, officially known as Scott v. Stanford, also struck down the Missouri Compromise Act of March 6, 1820, which barred slavery in the former Louisiana Territory. The Supreme Court declared the Act unconstitutional because the federal legislature could not prohibit the right of citizens to their "property" without due process of law. Today, the prohibition of slavery is regarded universally as a preemptory norm of international law, known as jus cogens, and is codified in article 7(1)(c) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) as an example of a "crime against humanity" intolerable to the international community. Continue Reading