There are two ways a federal court has subject matter jurisdiction of a dispute.  One is if there is a “federal question” involved.  The other is if there is “diversity of citizenship” between the parties – that is, a citizen of one state suing a citizen of another.

Dred Scott was a slave who lived in bondage in Missouri, a slave state.  Then he was taken for a time to Illinois, a free state where slavery was not permitted under the Missouri compromise law.  When his “owner” tried to take him back to Missouri he sued the man, named Sanford, in federal court claiming that under Illinois law he was an Illinois citizen and Sanford was a Missouri citizen and that the court had diversity jurisdiction to hear the case.

When the case got to the SCOTUS the question was whether there was actually diversity of citizenship to confer federal court jurisdiction over the case.  SCOTUS could not rule that Scott was not a citizen of Illinois, because that was up to Illinois and presented no question for SCOTUS to review.  But they wanted to throw the case out, and so they held that while Scott might be a citizen of a state (Illinois) he was not a citizen of the United States because of his condition of bondage, which made him “property”, and therefore there was no diversity of citizenship and federal courts had no jurisdiction to hear the case.

When the civil war ended the Congress wanted to overrule the Dred Scott case by constitutional amendment.

And that’s what the first sentence of the 14th amendment means:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

It was about the Dred Scott case.  But it says what it says.  We don’t know how, or whether, this sheds any light on current controversies, but we thought it would be appropriate to put it out there so that the debates and discussions could be more well informed.

You’re welcome.