Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)

“. . . . . . We think they [people of African ancestry] are . . . not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word “citizens” in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. . . .”

 

— Chief Justice Roger B. Taney,
speaking for the majority

 

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Dred Scott
Library of Congress, LC-US-262-5092-307977 

 

Gibbons v. Ogden (1824)

“. . . Few things were better known, than the immediate causes which led to the adoption of the present constitution . . . that the prevailing motive was to regulate commerce; to rescue it from the embarrassing and destructive consequences, resulting from the legislation of so many different States, and to place it under the protection of a uniform law.”

— Chief Justice John Marshall
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View of The Bay and Harbour of New York, From the Battery.