It was literally Taney's argument that the existence of discriminatory laws proved that free black Americans were definitionally not citizens, rather than treating their exercise of key aspects of citizenship as the starting point.https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/1424723653346873348 …
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In that section, he discussed how the states could designate citizens prior to Ratification, but does not at any point discuss the varying laws among states subsequent to Ratification. It's also wholly without citation to anything, and therefore dicta.
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It's *wrong* but it is not dicta. SCOTUS can make law. Taney's holding - black people could not be citizens at the Founding - actually renders the *rest* of the opinion dicta.
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