The size of the Court is not specified; the Constitution leaves it to Congress to set the number of justices.

The decision inflamed the national debate over slavery and deepened the divide that led ultimately to the Civil War.

In 1865, after the Union won the Civil War, the Dred Scott ruling was voided by the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, which abolished slavery except as punishment for a crime, and the Fourteenth Amendment, which guaranteed citizenship for "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof".

The Supreme Court's decision has been continuously denounced ever since, both for its overt racism and its role in the near destruction of the United States four years later.

"[5] Junius P. Rodriguez wrote that it is "universally condemned as the U.S. Supreme Court's worst decision".

[6] Historian David Thomas Konig agrees that it was "unquestionably, our court's worst decision ever.