More than this would be
revolution. But we think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous. We know
the court that made it has often overruled its own decisions, and we
shall do what we can to have it to overrule this. We offer no resistance
to it.
Judicial decisions are of greater or less authority as precedents
according to circumstances. That this should be so accords both with
common sense and the customary understanding of the legal profession.
If this important decision had been made by the unanimous concurrence of
the judges, and without any apparent partisan bias, and in accordance
with legal public expectation and with the steady practice of the
departments throughout our history, and had been in no part based on
assumed historical facts which are not really true; or, if wanting in
some of these, it had been before the court more than once, and had there
been affirmed and reaffirmed through a course of years, it then might be,
perhaps would be, factious, nay, even revolutionary, not to acquiesce in
it as a precedent.
But when, as is true, we find it wanting in all these claims to the
public confidence, it is not resistance, it is not factious, it is not
even disrespectful, to treat it as not having yet quite established a
settled doctrine for the country.
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