Dred Scott v. Sandford

60 U.S. 393
Scott v. Sandford
1857

​The Supreme Court decision Dred Scott v. Sandford was issued on March 6, 1857. Declared that slaves were not citizens of the United States and could not sue in Federal courts. This decision also declared that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional and that Congress did not have the authority to prohibit slavery in the territories.

​The Dred Scott decision was overturned by the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution.

Plessy v. Ferguson

163 U.S. 537
Plessy v. Ferguson (No. 210)
1896

Plessy v. Ferguson was the first major inquiry into the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment’s (1868) equal-protection clause, which prohibits the states from denying “equal protection of the laws” to any person within their jurisdictions. It gave constitutional sanction to laws designed to achieve racial segregation by means of separate and supposedly equal public facilities and services for African Americans and whites.

​It served as a controlling judicial precedent until it was overturned by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954).