Just before the U.S. Supreme Court recessed for the summer last week, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. was asked which decision, other than Marbury v. Madison and Brown v. Board of Education, has had “monumental consequence.”

Without hesitation, speaking at the judicial conference of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, Roberts picked the reviled Dred Scott decision of 1857, which upheld slavery in the territories.