Prigg v. Pennsylvania

Prigg v. Pennsylvania was the first decision of the U.S. Supreme Court to interpret the fugitive slave clause of the U.S. Constitution and also the first decision to consider the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793. In his “opinion of the Court,” Justice Joseph Story of Massachusetts reached six major conclusions: that the federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 was constitutional in all its provisions; that no state could pass any law that added requirements to the federal law or impeded the return of fugitive slaves, such as requiring that a state judge hear the case; that masters or their agents had a constitutional right of self-help (the technical term was “recaption”) to seize any fugitive slave anywhere and to bring that slave back to the South and that this could be done without complying with the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Act or even bringing the alleged fugitive before a judge; that if a captured fugitive slave was brought before a judge, he or she was entitled to only a summary proceeding to determine whether he or she was the person described in the papers provided by the master; that a judge was not to decide whether the person before him was a slave or free but only whether he or she was the person described in the papers; and that state officials should enforce but could not be required to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act.

With the exception of Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), this was the Supreme Court’s most important decision concerning slavery and race before the Civil War. Justice Story wrote an overwhelmingly proslavery opinion for the court, with the dissent of only one justice, John McLean of Ohio. However, most of the majority justices could not agree with each other on all the details. Thus, there were five separate opinions agreeing with the outcome but not necessarily agreeing with all of Justice Story’s points. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney agreed with the result but so emphatically disagreed with some of Story’s points that his opinion is sometimes mistakenly called a dissent. Only two justices in the majority failed to write an opinion.