Dred Scott v. Sandford , 60 U.S. 393 (decided March 6, 1857): once-free slave had no claim to freedom in slave state because he was black (probably history’s most-abrogated case, by the Civil War, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, and more) (Chief Justice Taney for some reason did not like the “hands-off” affirmance on procedural grounds drafted by Nelson and took quill in hand to write a sweeping holding that he imagined would settle the slavery issue once