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The most sweeping of the Reconstruction Amendments, the 14th Amendment overturned the Dred Scott decision, which held that Black Americans weren’t entitled to citizenship at birth.

The 14th Amendment was enacted as a direct response to the Supreme Court’s egregious 1857 Dred Scott decision, which held that persons of African descent, such as enslaved people and formerly enslaved people, could not be considered citizens under the Constitution.

It would join such other corrective amendments as the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, passed in the wake of the Civil War, both of which reversed the Supreme Court's infamous Dred Scott decision by abolishing slavery and granting citizenship to freed slaves.

Wade has supplanted its 1857 Dred Scott decision as the worst in its history.

Doerfler said controversial court decisions have often led to reform — including the 1857 Dred Scott decision that barred citizenship for enslaved and formerly enslaved people.