Graduation Year
2015
Document Type
Campus Only Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Legal Studies
Reader 1
Mark Golub
Reader 2
Rita Roberts
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
© 2014 Megan A. Petersen
Abstract
This article traces different forms of the same present throughout several eras in American political and social history. I focus on two texts, John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, and Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney’s majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford, in order to examine slavery as a legal institution in the United States, and, in particular, the constitutionality of slavery. Rather than a massive contradiction, the Dred Scott decision is just another iteration of American political and racial philosophy as it was 100, even 200 years earlier. Taney’s opinion is a reflection of what the Lockean social contract came to look like in a racially hierarchized, colonial society. The Dred Scott decision paints one of the most accurate pictures of American political thought but is always written off as nothing but bad law. A close examination of race and social contract theory as they influenced the American Constitution gives insight into more productive ways to talk about race today.
Recommended Citation
Petersen, Megan A., "Rights We Are Bound to Disrespect: John Locke, Dred Scott, and the American Social Contract" (2015). Scripps Senior Theses. 585.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/585
This thesis is restricted to the Claremont Colleges current faculty, students, and staff.
