Scott v. Sandford

Scott v. Sandford, also known as the Dred Scott case (1857), was a Supreme Court decision that ruled that African Americans, whether free or enslaved, could not be American citizens and had no right to sue in federal court. The case involved Dred Scott, an enslaved man who argued he should be free because he had lived in free territories. The Court decided that Congress couldn’t prohibit slavery in the territories, effectively protecting slavery and intensifying national divisions, which contributed to the tensions leading to the Civil War.