So near the end of courts decree Taney writes
"The counsel of the plaintiff has laid much stress upon that article in the constitution which confers on congress the power 'to dispose of an make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States,' but, in the judgment of the court, that provision has no bearing on the present controversy, and the power there given, whatever it may be, is confined, and was intended to be confined, to the territory which at the time belonged to, or was claimed by, the United States, and was within their boundaries as settled by the treaty with Great Britain, and can have no influence upon a territory afterwards acquired from a foreign Government. It was a special provision for a known and particular territory, and to meet a present emergency, and nothing more."
My question is this. Doesn't that make federal law non-holding upon new territories or states? I might not be reading or understanding it right but that makes it seem that the court is lessening the power of congress to make laws for new territories or states. Making them semi-autonomous from the Union.
I don't think I am understanding it correctly but I can't figure out why the court would seem to lessen the ability of the Federal Government to establish law in new states.
Your interpretation is fairly accurate. The Dred Scott opinion is the result of Justice Taney interpreting the Constitution to support his desired outcome - that Congress could not regulate slavery in the territories. To do this, Taney wrote the majority opinion (joined by five others) holding that Congress’s right to make rules (e.g., about slavery) for the territories was limited to those territories the US held in 1787. The implications of this are pretty far-reaching.
Justice Taney wanted to use the Dred Scott case as a vehicle to find the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional. The Missouri Compromise came about when Missouri requested admission as a slave state. At the time, the US was split evenly between slave and non-slave states. To keep the balance and to avoid the appearance that Congress could be told by a state what to do about slavery, Missouri was admitted as a slave state but Maine was also admitted as a non-slave state.
Taney’s opinion took the position that the Territories Clause only applied to territories the US owned in 1787, when the Constitution was signed. This meant that, according to Taney’s majority, Congress had no authority to do what it did with the Missouri Compromise since Missouri and Maine were not territories in 1787. Notably, Taney didn’t cite anything for his theory that the Territories Clause only applied to territories in 1787 (this interpretation was a fringe belief of pro-slavery politicians). It also seems directly contrary to the language of the Territories Clause (Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2 of the Constitution) which says "Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States .... ." There is no temporal limit and Congress had long interpreted it to mean that it could make rules and regulations for all territories.