In Part 10 of the Freedom Trials, Judge Stephen J. Sfekas turns to Dred Scott, the case that became one of the most infamous Supreme Court decisions in American history. Beginning with Strader v. Graham and moving through Scott v. Sandford, he traces how decades of precedent were upended as courts embraced an increasingly aggressive pro-slavery vision of the law.

The episode follows Dred and Harriet Scott’s long fight for freedom, the legal strategy behind their case, and the Supreme Court’s devastating 1857 ruling. Judge Sfekas then brings the series full circle with Jackson v. Hughes in Maryland, a final freedom case that rejected the logic of Dred Scott even as the nation moved closer to civil war.

This concluding installment asks what freedom suits really accomplished. Did they weaken slavery, or merely define its limits until tho ...