Dred Scott And The Problem Of Constitutional Evil

This is denser legal history than I normally dive into, so I am not sure I am fully qualified to judge the entire work. The most interesting portion to me was the first. Dred Scott is widely recognized as a terrible decision (in retrospect), and Graber explores how contemporary writers (from across the political spectrum) have characterized Dred Scott as a bad decision. Interestingly, different people disliked the ruling for different reasons (in ways that conformed with their politics), even if they came to the same conclusion. In Graber's telling, the Dred Scott decision becomes something convenient to pin on one's opponents, since it is so universally recognized as bad. Graber's book is an interesting one for looking at the problem of evil, and considering whether a constitution (drawn up by imperfect humans) can fully confront evil.