As one of the three branches of our federal government, the Supreme Court played a significant role in events before, during, and after the Civil War. Several rulings from the 1850s to the 1890s had a profound impact on this nation. The Dred Scott decision heightened passions over slavery in the volatile decade leading up to the outbreak of war. The Court took an active part during the Civil War by adjudicating issues of civil rights. In the years that followed the war, the Court's rulings relating to the meaning of citizenship and the protection of civil liberties, especially in the Slaughterhouse cases and Plessy v. Ferguson, influenced the nation's stance on race and citizenship for decades to come.

Early in its history, the United States Supreme Court was preoccupied with establishing its legitimacy as a national institution and its power of judicial review...