In March 1857, in one of the most controversial events preceding the

American Civil War (1861-65), the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in
the case of Dred Scott v. Sanford. The case had been brought before the
court by Dred Scott, a slave who had lived with his owner in a free state
before returning to the slave state of Missouri. Scott argued that his time spent
in these locations entitled him to emancipation. In his decision, Chief Justice
Roger B. Taney, a staunch supporter of slavery, disagreed: The court found
that no black, free or slave, could claim U.S. citizenship, and therefore blacks
were unable to petition the court for their freedom. The Dred Scott decision
incensed abolitionists and heightened North-South tensions, which would
erupt in war just three years later This convoluted case (1857), both a cause
and an effect of sectional conflict, contributed to antebellum political and
constitutional controversy. It also made Chief Justice Roger B. Taney seem a
satanic figure to contemporary antislavery activists and many later historians.

Dred Scott, a black slave, and his wife had once belonged to army
surgeonJohn Emerson, who had bought him from the Peter Blow family of St.
Louis. After Emerson died, the Blows apparently helped Scott sue Emersons
widow for his freedom, but lost the case in state court. Because Mrs. Emerson
left him with her brother John Sanford (misspelled Sandford in court papers),
a New York citizen, Scott sued again in federal court,
claiming Missouri citizenship. Scotts lawyers eventually appealed to the U.S.
Supreme Court.

Originally, Justice Samuel Nelson was to write a narrow opinion, arguing that
the case belonged in the state, not a federal court. But northern antislavery
justices John McLean of Ohio and Benjamin R. Curtis
of Massachusetts planned to dissent, arguing that Scott should be freed under
the Missouri Compromisebecause he had traveled north of the 3630 line,
whereas the Courts southerners wanted to rule the compromise
unconstitutional. Among several opinions, Taneys was both the most
important and the most tortuous. He ruled that blacks, slave or free, could not
be citizens (Curtis showed this to be counter to precedent). Nor could Scott
have become free by traveling north of the Missouri Compromise line; slavery,
Taney said, could not be banned in the territories. Six justices agreed that
Scott was not a citizen, but disagreed over whether a freed slave could
become a citizen. Nelson concurred in the ruling but not in its reasoning, and
McLean and Curtis dissented.

Republicans assailed the decision, which they saw as an attempt to destroy

their nascent party. Democrats divided over the Dred Scott case. Stephen A.
Douglasended up opposing it as counter to his doctrine of popular
sovereignty. President James Buchanans supporters considered it a final
answer to the sectional controversy, although they were unaware at the time
that Buchanan had influenced Justice Robert Grier of Pennsylvania to join the
southern majority so that it would look less like a sectional decision. The Dred
Scott case remained the subject of noisy constitutional and historical debate
and contributed to the divisions that helped lead to Abraham Lincolns election
and the Civil War.

Dred Scott was born into slavery sometime in 1795, in Southampton County,
Virginia. He made history by launching a legal battle to gain his freedom. After
his first owner died, Scott spent time in two free states working for several
subsequent owners. Shortly after he married, he tried to buy freedom for
himself and his family but failed, so he took his case to the Missouri courts,
where he won only to have the decision overturned at the Supreme Court
level, an event so controversial it was harbinger for Abraham Lincolns
Emancipation Proclamation and inevitably of the Civil War. Scott died in 1858.

Early Life
Dred Scott was born in sometime around the turn of the century, often fixed at 1795, in
Southampton County, Virginia. Legend has it that his name was Sam, but when his elder brother
died, he adopted his name instead. His parents were slaves, but it is uncertain whether the Blow
family owned them at his birth or thereafter. Peter Blow and his family relocated first to
Huntsville, Alabama, and then to St. Louis Missouri. After Peter Blow's death, in the early
1830s, Scott was sold to a U.S. Army doctor, John Emerson.
In 1836, Scott fell in love with a slave of another army doctor, 19-year-old Harriett Robinson,
and her ownership was transferred over to Dr. Emerson when they were wed.

In the ensuing years, Dr. Emerson traveled to Illinois and the Wisconsin Territories, both of
which prohibited slavery. When Emerson died in 1846, Scott tried to buy freedom for himself
and his family from Emerson's widow, but she refused.

'Dred Scott v. Sandford'

Dred Scott made history by launching a legal battle to gain his freedom. That he had lived with
Dr. Emerson in free territories become the basis for his case.

The process began in 1846: Scott lost in his initial suit in a local St. Louis district court, but he
won in a second trial, only to have that decision overturned by the Missouri State Supreme
Court. With support from local abolitionists, Scott filed another suit in federal court in 1854,
against John Sanford, the widow Emerson's brother and executor of his estate. When that case
was decided in favor of Sanford, that Scott turned to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In December 1856, Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech, foreshadowing the Emancipation

Proclamation of 1863, examining the constitutional implications of the Dred Scott Case.

On March 6, 1857, the Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sandfordwas issued, 11 long
years after the initial suits. Seven of the nine judges agreed with the outcome delivered by Chief
Justice Roger Taney, who announced that slaves were not citizens of the United States and
therefore had no rights to sue in Federal courts: "... They had no rights which the white man was
bound to respect."

The decision also declared that the Missouri Compromise (which had allowed Scott to sample
freedom in Illinois and Wisconsin) was unconstitutional, and that Congress did not have the
authority to prohibit slavery.

The Dred Scott decision sparked outrage in the northern states and glee in the souththe
growing schism made civil war inevitable.

Too controversial to retain the Scotts as slaves after the trial, Mrs. Emerson remarried and
returned Dred Scott and his family to the Blows who granted them their freedom in May 1857.
That same month, Frederick Douglass delivered a speech discussing the Dred Scott decision on
the anniversary of the American Abolition Society.
Eventually, the 13th and 14th amendments to the Constitution overrode this Supreme Court
ruling.

Death and Legacy

Dred Scott and his family stayed in St. Louis after his emancipation, and he
found work as a porter in a local hotel. But after only a little more than a year
of true freedom, Scott died from tuberculosis on September 17, 1858.

Dred Scott is buried in the Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis (Harriet survived him
by 18 years and is buried in Hillsdale, Missouri). Putting pennies (displaying
the face of President Lincoln) on Scott's headstone has become a local
tradition over the decades. The commemorative marker next to the headstone
reads: "In Memory Of A Simple Man Who Wanted To Be Free."

In 1997, Dred Scott and his wife Harriet were admitted to the St. Louis Walk of
Fame.
The Roe v. Wade lawsuit
Roe v. Wade was filed in Texas in March 1970 on behalf of the named plaintiff and "all women similarly
situated," typical wording for a class-action lawsuit. "Jane Roe" was the lead plaintiff of the class.
Because of the time it took for the case to make its way through the courts, the decision did not come
in time for Norma McCorvey to have an abortion. She gave birth to her child, whom she put up for
adoption.
Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee were the Roe v. Wade plaintiff's lawyers. They were looking for a
woman who wanted an abortion, but did not have the means to obtain one. An adoption attorney
introduced them to Norma McCorvey. They needed a plaintiff who would remain pregnant without
traveling to another state or country where abortion was legal, because they feared that if their
plaintiff obtained an abortion outside of Texas, her case could be rendered moot and dropped.
At various times, Norma McCorvey has clarified that she did not consider herself an unwilling
participant in the Roe v. Wade lawsuit. However, she felt that feminist activists treated her with disdain
because she was a poor, blue-collar, drug-abusing woman instead of a polished, educated feminist.
Troubled Background

Norma Nelson was a high-school drop-out. She had run away from home and been sent to reform
school. Her parents divorced when she was 13. She suffered abuse. She met and married Elwood
McCorvey at age 16, and left Texas for California.

When she returned, pregnant and frightened, her mother took her baby to raise. Norma McCorvey's
second child was raised by the father of the baby, with no contact from her. She initially said that her
third pregnancy, the one in question at the time of Roe v. Wade, was the result of rape, but years later
she said she had invented the rape story in an attempt to make a stronger case for an abortion. The
rape story was of little consequence to her lawyers, because they wanted to establish a right to
abortion for all women, not just those who had been raped.
Activist Work
After Norma McCorvey revealed that she was Jane Roe, she encountered harassment and violence.
People in Texas yelled at her in grocery stores and shot at her house. She aligned herself with the pro-
choice movement, even speaking at the U.S. Capitolin Washington D.C. She worked at several clinics
where abortions were provided. In 1994, she wrote a book, with a ghostwriter, called I am Roe: My Life, Roe
v. Wade, and Freedom of Choice.

tHE STORY OF NORMA McCORVEY

The Woman Who Became "Jane Roe"
In 1970, Norma McCorvey, under the pseudonym "Jane Roe," filed a law suit challenging the Texas laws that
criminalized abortion. The case eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court as the now-famous Roe v. Wade. The
"Roe" of that case is described as a pregnant woman who "wished to terminate her pregnancy by an abortion
'performed by a competent, licensed physician, under safe, clinical conditions'; that she was unable to get a 'legal'
abortion in Texas. . . . She claimed that the Texas statutes were unconstitutionally vague and that they abridged
her right of personal privacy. . . ."[1]

The true story, as Norma McCorvey tells it, is more complicated. She describes herself as having been relatively
ignorant of the facts of her own case, and claims that her attorneys simply used her for their own predetermined
ends. They "were looking for somebody, anybody, to use to further their own agenda. I was their most willing
dupe."[2] She had indeed become pregnant with her third child and sought to end her pregnancy, but she was not
aware of all the implications of abortion or even what the term itself meant. "'Abortion', to me, meant 'going back'
to the condition of not being pregnant."[3] She did not fully realize that this process would end a human life. She
says that her attorney Sarah Weddington, rather than correcting her misconceptions, deliberately confused the
issue: "For their part, my lawyers lied to me about the nature of abortion. Weddington convinced me, 'It's just a
piece of tissue. You just missed your period.'" [4] Another problem was that Norma claimed that her pregnancy was
the result of a gang-rape, in order to present a more sympathetic picture. As she has since admitted, this was
totally untrue.[5]

Norma states that her actual involvement in the case was minimal. She signed the initial affidavit without even
reading it, and "was never invited into court. I never testified. I was never present before any court on any level,
and I was never at any hearing on my case . . . I found out about the decision from the newspaper just like the rest
of the country."[6]

Norma never had an abortion. She gave her baby up for adoption.[7]

For several years, Norma was silent about her role as "Jane Roe." In the 1980's, "in order to justify my own
conduct, with many conflicting emotions,"[8] she became involved in the abortion movement, making public
appearances in support of abortion. Around 1992, she began to work at abortion clinics. As Norma explains, "I had
no actual experience with abortion until that point," becoming "even more emotionally confused and conflicted
between what my conscience knew to be evil, and what the judges, my mind and my need for money were telling
me was OK."[9]

When Norma was working at a clinic in Dallas in 1995, a pro-life group moved into the same building, leading to a
series of dramatic encounters between Norma and pro-life activists. At first she was bitterly opposed to their
presence, but over time she became friends with many of them and began to have serious doubts about the
morality of abortion.

She was particularly affected by her friendship with Emily Mackey, the 7 year-old daughter of one of the pro-lifers.
She began to realize what abortion was doing to children. "Abortion was no longer an 'abstract right.' It had a face
now, in a little girl named Emily."[10] Eventually (due in large part to Emily's urging)[11] she started going to
church, and began to reject her past involvement with the pro-abortion movement.

Since her conversion she has dedicated herself to pro-life work, starting her own ministry, "Roe No More," in 1997,
and continuing to speak out against abortion and for life. In 2003 she went to court in an attempt to overturn Roe
v. Wade. Her case was dismissed by the Fifth Circuit appeals court; however, one of the judges of the case wrote a
concurrence that was strongly critical of the Roe decision.[12] The U.S. Supreme Court subsequently denied
review.[13] In 1998 and 2005 she testified before Congress about the injustices of abortion and the deceit
underlying Roe v. Wade.[14]

The Story Behind Lemon v. Kurtzman

On March 3, 1971, the Supreme Court combined three cases to determine whether
public tax dollars could be used to support private education, particularly at religious
institutions. In Lemon v. Kurtzman, The Court decided that no state funds could be
used to pay for religious education. In making their decision, they established the
three-prong Lemon test. Warren E. Burger wrote the decision for the Court, which
unanimously agreed on the outcome.

Alton Toussaint Lemon

Alton Toussaint Lemon, a taxpayer and resident of Pennsylvania, filed a suit against
David Kurtzman, acting superintendent of the Department of Public Instruction in the
State of Pennsylvania. Kurtzman was expected to follow Pennsylvania's new state law
that allowed him to use state funds to reimburse teachers' salaries, secular instruction
materials, and secular textbooks, to private schools, most of them Roman Catholic.
Lemon felt that this amounted to state support of religion. Mr. Lemon first spoke
about the law at an American Civil Liberties Union meeting. Mr. Lemon, along with
two other Pennsylvania taxpayers, was chosen to bring the case to court, because he
was a man of color, and Pennsylvania was still dealing with public segregation.

Student and Teacher Involvement

Under Pennsylvania Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Act 3,
approximately $5 million was earmarked for private schools. The law affected up to
107,043 students that attended the state's private schools. Under the law, about 250
teachers could receive a 15 percent salary supplement from the state. Salaries at these
private schools were usually lower than public school salaries. The teacher could only
teach secular material. In addition, the 107,043 students could receive state textbooks
that only contained secular material. The state would also reimburse the school for
supplies used in teaching secular subjects.

The Decision
On June 28, 1971, the Court handed down its decision that spending state taxpayer
money in this way was unconstitutional. Supreme Court Justice Burger announced the
decision. He said that the Court found that all state laws must pass three different
propositions. First, the state law must have a secular legislative purpose. Second, the
state law must not have the effect of advancing or inhibiting religion. Third, the state
law must not result in an excessive government entanglement with religion.
Combined, these three statements make up the Lemon test.

Sloan v. Lemon
Two years later, Alton Lemon was back in court again arguing a similar case. Faced
with the facts of the Lemon decision, Pennsylvania rewrote its law to allow parents to
receive partial reimbursement when they paid for children to attend a private school.
Lemon's lawyers argued that it did not matter who received the aid, and that it was
still given by the state to support a religious endeavor. The Supreme Court ruled that
Pennsylvania could not give the money to parents, because in doing so, the state was
establishing a religion. The vote was closer this time, with six justices agreeing with
the decision, and three disagreeing.

Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe

The Lemon test developed during the Sloan v. Kurtzman case has been used to help
settle a number of other cases. One of the most recent cases settled by the Lemon test
was the Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe case in 2000. Before the case
was brought, most football games in Texas started with a student offering an opening
prayer. A Catholic family and a Mormon family brought suit against the school
district claiming that the prayers violated the Establishment Clause of the First
Amendment. The judge allowed the two families to remain anonymous, and thus
referred to them as Doe. The court ruled that student-led prayers over public address
systems could not happen on school grounds. The court applied the Lemon test and
said it did not meet the separation of state and religion the Establishment Clause
requires because the equipment needed was provided with taxpayer's funds.
The separation of church and state as defined in the First Amendment has given
legislators many problems. The First Amendment simply reads "Congress shall make
no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people
peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances,"
but legislators have caused much controversy by enacting laws that support religion
even in minor ways. In Lemon v. Kurtzman, the Supreme Court found that state tax
money could not be given to private schools, especially those operated by religious
organizations, while in Sloan v. Lemon, the Supreme Court found that the money
could not be given to parents who chose to send their children to private schools.