Dred Scott and Asian Americans: Was Chief Justice Taney the First Critical Race Theorist?
Kevin R. Johnson * | 24.3 | Essay | Citation: Dred Scott and Asian Americans: Was Chief Justice Taney the First Critical Race Theorist?, 24 U. Pa. J. Const. L. 751 (2022).
This commentary considers Professor Jack Chin’s analysis in his Article, Dred Scott and Asian Americans, of the white supremacist underpinnings and modern legacy of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney’s decisions in United States v. Dow, a little-known decision denying full citizenship rights to Asian Americans, and Dred Scott v. Sandford, an iconic Supreme Court decision that rejected full citizenship to a freed Black man and precipitated the Civil War. It further explores how Chief Justice Taney’s analysis of race and racial subordination in the nineteenth century exemplifies the fundamental tenet of modern Critical Race Theory that the law operates to enforce and maintain white supremacy.
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* Dean and Mabie-Apallas Professor of Public Interest Law and Chicana/o Studies, University of California, Davis School of Law. Thanks to my colleague Professor Jack Chin for his insightful article, Dred Scott and Asian Americans, which inspired this commentary and brought a group of scholars together to discuss his article at a symposium at U.C. Davis in September 2021. The rich discussion of Professor Chin’s article greatly helped my thinking about the issues discussed in this essay.