by Rachel A. Elovitz

As we approach the sesquicentennial anniversary of the American Civil War, we have a responsibility – to the children of the next 150 years – to ask ourselves some tough questions. Where are we now as a nation in relation to where we were then? What lessons have we learned? What mistakes have we repeated? How can we avoid them in the future, and in our efforts to evolve as a nation, what role should the legal community play?

A century-and-a-half ago, in his infamous Dred Scott decision, Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney ruled that African slaves were chattel, property of which their owners could not be deprived in the absence of due process, “beings . . . so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” We were a “house divided,” languishing in a schism so consuming that shortly after congressional nominee Abraham Lincoln highlighted its schizophrenic state, the house exploded – behind the white smoke of Springfield muskets and Harpers Ferry rifles.