When Donald Trump knows more about American law than you do.
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee doesn't know that the infamous
Dred Scott decision denying citizenship to black Americans is not, in fact, currently "
the law of the land."
“I’ve been just drilled by TV hosts over the past week, ‘How dare you say that, uh, [marriage equality is] not the law of the land?’” Huckabee said. “Because that’s their phrase, ‘it’s the law of the land. Michael, the Dred Scott decision of 1857 still remains to this day the law of the land which says that black people aren’t fully human. Does anybody still follow the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision?”
It took radio host Michael Medved to gently point out to Mike Huckabee that
Dred Scott was overturned by constitutional amendment a short time later after certain ... unpleasantries. It was a bit of a big deal, and was definitely in all the papers. So no,
Dred Scott is most certainly not "to this day the law of the land," not by any possible interpretation, and we must add this to the pile of things about the Supreme Court over which Mike Huckabee is still deeply and inexplicably confused.
“The Supreme Court in the same-sex marriage decision made a law and they made it up out of thin air. Therefore, until Congress decides to codify that and give it a statute it’s really not an operative law and that’s why what Kim Davis did was operate under not only the Kentucky Constitution which was the law under which she was elected but she’s operating under the fact that there’s no statute in her state nor at the federal level that authorizes her."
So while the Republican establishment frets that Donald Trump is not a real candidate and that his rank ignorance of American law and government is an insult to the party, let's all take a moment to note that Serious Candidate Mike Huckabee has never figured out why it is that the
Dred Scott decision is no longer being followed today. He presumably believes slavery at some point fell out of fashion and society, over time, just sort of decided to ignore the court on that one.