Scott v. Sandford (1857), the Dred Scott decision, is the consensus choice as the worst decision in the Supreme Court's history. Legal scholar David Currie summarized the conventional view: Dred Scott was “bad law,” “bad policy,” and “bad judicial politics” (cited in Judges, p. 15). In this conventional view, Chief Justice Roger Taney's opinion for the Court misinterpreted the Constitution, and it took the morally indefensible position of disallowing citizenship and the rights of citizens for slaves and their descendants. The decision was also a political blunder: The Court intervened in the slavery issue in an effort to resolve it and prevent war, but instead inflamed passions and made war more likely.