23 marzo 1832 anni - Worcester v. Georgia
Descrizione:
Worcester and eleven other missionaries met and published a resolution in protest of an 1830 Georgia law prohibiting all white men from living on Native American land without a state license. While the state law was an effort to restrict white settlement on Cherokee territory, Worcester reasoned that obeying the law would, in effect, be surrendering the sovereignty of the Cherokee Nation to manage their own territory. Once the law had taken effect, Governor George Rockingham Gilmer ordered the militia to arrest Worcester and the others who signed the document and refused to get a license.
The United States Supreme Court vacated the conviction of Samuel Worcester and held that the Georgia criminal statute that prohibited non-Native Americans from being present on Native American lands without a license from the state was unconstitutional.
Chief Justice John Marshall laid out in this opinion that the relationship between the Indian Nations and the United States is that of nations. He reasoned that the United States, in the character of the federal government, inherited the rights of Great Britain as they were held by that nation. Those rights, he stated, include the sole right to deal with the Indian nations in North America, to the exclusion of any other European power. This did not include the rights of possession to their land or political dominion over their laws. He acknowledged that the exercise of conquest and purchase can give political dominion, but those are in the hands of the federal government, and individual states had no authority in American Indian affairs. Georgia's statute was therefore invalid.
Marshall's language in Worcester may have been motivated by his regret that his earlier opinions in Fletcher v. Peck and Johnson v. M'Intosh had been used as a justification for Georgia's actions.
Aggiunto al nastro di tempo:
History of Leadership In The States
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