Dred Scott v Sandford

Dred Scott v Sandford was an 1857 decision of the Supreme Court of the United States holding that African Americans, whether enslaved or free, were not and could never become citizens of the United States, so Dred Scott had no standing to sue for his freedom in federal court, and that Congress lacked the constitutional power to prohibit slavery in the federal territories, striking down the Missouri Compromise. The ruling inflamed sectional conflict in the years leading to the Civil War. It was effectively superseded by the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery, and the Fourteenth Amendment, which established birthright citizenship, both ratified after the war, and it is widely regarded, including by the Supreme Court itself, as the worst decision in the Court's history.