Having established to his satisfaction that blacks were not citizens,10 Taney could have stopped there and refused jurisdiction because the case was not properly before the Court. That he did not do so rendered the remainder of his decision, in the opinion of many contemporaries and the earliest generations of historians, obiter dictum —a statement in passing on matters not formally before the Court and therefore without force of law. But Taney insisted that because the circuit court had considered all aspects of the case and decided them “on their merits,” the whole case including the
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