AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
As the country celebrates its 250th birthday, we turn to an essential question - what does it mean to be an American? In a landmark ruling last week, the Supreme Court said almost all babies born on U.S. soil should count as citizens. But the decision also surfaced tensions about the role history and race play in the law. NPR's Carrie Johnson reports.
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Two people with ties to a fraught history gathered last week in the nation's capital. What binds them is a Supreme Court case from 1857 when a man named Dred Scott sued for his freedom. Lynne Jackson is Scott's great-great-granddaughter.
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LYNNE JACKSON: This was a major catalyst for the Civil War.
JOHNSON: She spoke at St. Mark's Church on Capitol Hill just blocks from the Supreme Court on the final day of the court's term. Sitting next to her was Charlie Taney, the great-great-grandnephew of the man who wrote the Dred Scott opinion. That ruling said enslaved people were not citizens of the United States.
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CHARLIE TANEY: I'm going to quote him. He said that Black people are so far inferior that they have no rights which the white man is bound to respect. So he basically categorized Black people as less, inferior, completely inferior to white people.
JOHNSON: Charlie Taney says he and his family struggled with the legacy of their ancestor, Roger Taney, the former chief justice of the United States.
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TANEY: He actually participated in a lot of important law, and our family's proud of that. But unfortunately, he also authored what is commonly thought of as the single worst decision in the history of the court. It's been called odious.
JOHNSON: The 14th Amendment adopted after the Civil War overruled the Dred Scott decision and said virtually all babies born here are Americans. The question surfaced again nearly 160 years later, when President Trump tried to limit birthright citizenship with an executive order. His Solicitor General John Sauer argued the birthright case before the court.
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JOHN SAUER: I'll maybe start by addressing Dred Scott. You know, as you alluded to the fact, Dred Scott, you know, imposed one of the worst injustices in the history of this court.
JOHNSON: Hours before Lynne Jackson and Charlie Taney gathered at the church in D.C., the Supreme Court narrowly rejected Trump's executive order, calling it an attempt to rewrite history. But three conservative justices dissented, including Clarence Thomas, who wrote the 14th Amendment was intended to apply only to freed slaves and their children. Eric Wessan is a conservative lawyer who closely follows the court's work.
ERIC WESSAN: There's definitely deep disagreement on the court about the nature of the Constitution as it pertains to race.
JOHNSON: For one thing, the birthright issue seemed to be settled for a century. But Wessan, the solicitor general of Iowa, says it was a close call at the Supreme Court.
WESSAN: On the Constitutional issue, it was a 5-4 decision. One difference in vote would have yielded a difference in outcome on the Constitution.
JOHNSON: He says the justices have been, quote, "shadowboxing" over whether their colleagues invoke race selectively to achieve partisan ends in cases that involve voting and redistricting.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a separate opinion last week to emphasize the 14th Amendment did far more than overturn the Dred Scott ruling. She wrote that amendment was meant as a reset for the nation, not a spot treatment for the dark stain of slavery.
Charlie Taney's been watching the debate at the high court, and he welcomes the new Supreme Court decision, which Justice Jackson says should mark the death knell for efforts to limit citizenship. But it's not at all clear the issue has left the political stage. President Trump and his allies in Congress say they're not giving up. Taney says he wonders about the aftereffects.
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TANEY: You know, I hope their grandchildren don't go through what I went through. I've had to slide down on my seat when the Dred Scott case came up 'cause my name was Taney. So the people who would like to be part of getting rid of your birthright citizenship, they might want to keep that in mind, what they'll do to their own family for the future.
JOHNSON: Nine years ago, Taney publicly apologized to Lynne Jackson. They've appeared together more than a dozen times since then to talk about the process of reconciliation. Jackson runs a foundation to honor Dred Scott's legacy in his fight to vindicate his rights. She says for her, forgiveness was easy.
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JACKSON: Remember the R-word? Everybody thinks it's race or racism or something like that, and it's sincerely just the word relationship. You start to build a relationship.
JOHNSON: Jackson and Taney hope their relationship can be a model for the rest of the country.
Carrie Johnson, NPR News, Washington.
(SOUNDBITE OF MF DOOM'S "ARROW ROOT") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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