Trace the impact of one of the most significant Supreme Court decisions as Dred Scott v. Sandford walks you through this iconic court case, whose ruling eventually led to the abolition of slavery.

Paul Finkelman (PhD, University of Chicago) is the President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law and Public Policy and Senior Fellow in the Government Law Center at Albany Law School. His many books include Landmark Decisions of the United States Supreme Court (2008) and A March of Liberty: A Constitutional History of the United States (2002), which he coauthored; The Encyclopedia of American Civil Liberties (2006) and The Encyclopedia of the New American Nation (2006), which he edited; and Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson (2001). For the Bedford Series in History and Culture he edited Dred Scott v. Sandford: A Brief History with Documents (1997) and Defending Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Old South: A Brief History with Documents (2003). Finkelman has also published numerous scholarly articles on American legal history and civil rights, and he lectures frequently on these subjects.