What Was Lincoln Referring to with "Pernicious Abstraction"?

Lincoln’s “Pernicious Abstraction” and the Dred Scott Decision

In a speech criticizing the Supreme Court’s 1857 ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford, Abraham Lincoln coined the phrase “pernicious abstraction.” The Court had declared that enslaved people were not U.S. citizens and could not sue in federal court, effectively denying them any legal standing. Lincoln argued that the decision reduced a profoundly complex moral and legal issue—human bondage and citizenship—to a single, abstract principle that ignored the lived realities of enslaved men, women, and children.

By labeling the Court’s reasoning a “pernicious abstraction,” Lincoln highlighted how an oversimplified legal doctrine could become a dangerous tool, stripping away the human consequences of the ruling and legitimizing the expansion of slavery. His critique underscored the need to confront the concrete suffering caused by such judicial abstractions rather than retreat into theoretical formalism.