On March 3, 1832, Chief Justice John Marshall spoke for all but one of his fellow justices when he declared that the state of Georgia had no right to pass laws aimed at forcing Cherokee Indians off their lands.
“The Cherokee nation,” he wrote, “is a distinct community, occupying its own territory, with boundaries accurately described, in which the laws of Georgia can have no force.” The federal government had signed treaties with the Cherokees and enacted laws regulating relations with them. “These laws throw a shield over the Cherokee Indians. They guaranteed to them their rights of occupancy, of self-government, and the full enjoyment of those blessings which might be attained in their humble condition. But, by the enactments of the State of Georgia, this shield is broken in pieces -- the infant institutions of the Cherokees are abolished, and their laws annulled.”
Georgia had to back off, the Supreme Court ruled.
This was the famous judgment in Worcester v. Georgia that supposedly pro…
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