Saturday, October 07, 2023

Tribal land

"John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!" Attributed to Andrew Jackson, who may not have actually said it, though in a letter he says something similar. The decision was Worcester v Georgia. Oddly enough, given Jackson's record in the subsequent Cherokee eviction, the matter at issue was "Did a State have the right to pass a law requiring that a non-Indian visiting tribal land had to get a permit from the State first?" The law aimed at protecting the Indian tribes' rights, and the Supreme Court ruling removed that protection.

The Court's decision was almost certainly right--relations between nations are what the Constitution envisioned, and a State doesn't function as a nation. The Feds didn't prove more honorable than Georgia, though.

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