khrushcheva135_taney roberts Left: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images. Right: Alex Wong/Getty Images.

Disorder from the Courts

Globally, judges have probably done as much as any band of revolutionaries to disrupt political systems – in the process often undermining, rather than advancing, the cause of justice. The US Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts is a case in point.

MOSCOW – In the notorious case of Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857, US Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney ruled that African-Americans were not and could not be citizens of the United States, and that the 1820 Missouri Compromise – which had created an (admittedly uneasy) equilibrium between slave and free states – was unconstitutional. Many consider the ruling the spark that ignited the American Civil War. The US Supreme Court seems not to have learned from its mistakes.

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