The case before the court was that of Dred Scott v. Sanford. Dred Scott, a slave who had lived in the free state of Illinois and the free territory of Wisconsin before moving back to the slave ...

Dred Scott first went to trial to sue for his freedom in 1847. Ten years later, after a decade of appeals and court reversals, his case was finally brought before the United States Supreme Court.

In the first—but surely not the last—court order temporarily blocking President Donald Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship, Reagan-appointed Judge John Coughenour said he could not ...