Dred Scott v Sanford was an 1857 Supreme Court case that decided that people living in the United States who were of African descent, regardless if they were slaves or not, were not U.S. citizens and had no legal recourse under U.S. law. The court also ruled that slaveowners were protected as property owners under the Fifth Amendment. The case was brought to the court after Dred Scott, a former slave, attempted to sue his “owner” Dr. John Emerson in 1833 for refusing to allow Dred Scott and his wife to buy their freedom after years of service in a free state. The court ruled that as a non-citizen, Scott had no right to sue and was not considered a free man by virtue of residing in a free state. The decision was not unanimous, with dissenting opinions formally submitted by Justice Benjamin Curtis, but the ruling would not be overturned until the writing of the 14th Amendment in 1868 which granted citizenship to anyone born in the United States.
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