DREDD SCOTT CASE: MINORITY OPINION

Essay by EssaySwap ContributorCollege, Undergraduate February 2008

download word file, 4 pages 3.0

Is a man to lose all privileges, rights, and immunities guaranteed to him by the constitution of the United States, simply because his ancestors before him were brought here as people who were denied these without choice, in a time before such things were even considered as being ever possible? Is such a doctrine at all justified? If so, than if a white man was at one point denied the right of that to sue in a court of the United States due to unjust circumstances, then all of his descendants to follow must be denied that right as well. This would never be considered appropriate by this courts standards.

People of African ancestry may not have been intended to be included as citizens with rights under the constitution of the United States, but the United States itself was never intended to be a great country of its own.

Does this mean that many of us are not citizens either? Do we lack citizenship simply because our ancestors came here not as citizens of the United States, but as citizens of Great Britain and other countries that never intended on their descendants becoming part of a new great nation. The constitution did not intend to include those of African ancestry under the word citizens, but these intentions no longer carry the same meaning. The addition of free states to the union proves this, for those under governance of these free states must view the word citizens as including all men. To read the word ?citizens? as only ?white citizens? is just personal preference and interpretation of a word that does not further clarify itself to having any such intentions.

It is perceived to be of criminal nature for a man of African ancestry to have the same freedoms...