Austin Allen finds that the outcome of Dred Scott hinged not on a single issue-slavery-but on a web of assumptions, agendas, and commitments held collectively and individually by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney and his colleagues.

The Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott decision denied citizenship to African Americans and enabled slavery's westward expansion. The author tracks arguments made by Taney Court justices in the two decades prior to Dred Scott and in its immediate aftermath. He reveals that Dred Scott was an outgrowth of Jacksonian jurisprudence.