Regarding “Today's Dred Scott” (Letters, Sept. 26-Oct. 2):

Mr. Dick Reeder writes that “President Lincoln totally ignored the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision.” Not entirely true. Lincoln said in his first inaugural address: “(N)or do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case, upon the parties to a suit, as to the object of that suit.” In other words, Lincoln admitted that he was bound to enforce the court's decision as applied to the slave Scott and his “owner,” Sandford. What Lincoln denied was that the chief executive was also bound to apply the Dred Scott rule to other slaves. Moreover, he promised in his 1858 Senate campaign to vote for a law that would overturn the Scott holding.

There is an essential difference between presidents and federal judges respecting rules handed down by the Supreme Court. The court is called “supreme” in the Constitution because it is the final authority for the entire judicial branch. St. Thomas Aquinas’ correct statement that “an unjust law is no law at all” is not apropos because there is one judicial body that has constitutional authority to decide what laws are just. Lower-court judges are bound as a matter of justice to obey that final tribunal. The Supreme Court cannot, however, bind either the president or Congress since they are separate, co-equal branches.

It would not have been courageous for Judge Casey to disobey the Supreme Court — it would have been lawless and unjust. The Register's Sept. 5-11 editorial (“Judge Casey: Pro-Life, Pro-Law?”) correctly invoked St. Thomas More's remark because it was not just a single law but the rule of law itself that would have been struck down if Casey had disregarded the holding of the nation's highest court. As Catholics, we must honor the rule of law within a regime that is based on “the laws of nature and of nature's God.”

Judge Casey provided the Supreme Court with a factual record on which to reverse Carhart. Let's hope and pray that President Bush gets to name at least one new justice to use Casey's record to reverse the 5-4 Carhart partial-birth abortion holding, as well as the Roe rule — which has poisoned America's constitutional jurisprudence for more than 30 years.

Dennis Teti

Hyattsville, Maryland