Worcester v. Georgia

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1832 United States Supreme Court case

Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. (6 Pet.) 515 (1832), is a landmark case in which 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. 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. The opinion is most famous for its _dicta _, which laid out the relationship between tribes , state , and federal governments . It is considered to have built the foundations of the doctrine of tribal sovereignty in the United States .

Background

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Samuel Austin Worcester was a missionary to the Cherokee , translator of the Bible, printer, and defender of the Cherokee's sovereignty. He collaborated with Elias Boudinot in the American Southeast to establish the _Cherokee Phoenix _, the first Native American newspaper.

During this period, the westward push of European-American settlers was continually encroaching on Cherokee territory, even after they had made some land cessions to the US government . With the help of Worcester and his sponsor, the American Board of missionaries made a plan to fight the encroachment by using the courts. They wanted to take a case to the U.S. Supreme Court to define the relationship between the federal and state governments, and establish the sovereignty of the Cherokee nation.

Hiring William Wirt , a former U.S. Attorney General , the Cherokee argued their position before the U.S. Supreme Court in Georgia v. Tassel. The court granted a writ of error for a Cherokee convicted in a Georgia court for a murder occurring in Cherokee territory, though the state refused to accept the writ.

In 1831, _Cherokee Nation v. Georgia _ case was dismissed by the court on technical grounds for lack of jurisdiction. In the latter's majority opinion, Chief Justice Marshall described the Cherokee Nation as a "domestic dependent nation" with no rights binding on a state.

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. 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.

After two series of trials, all eleven men were convicted and sentenced to four years of hard labor at the state penitentiary in Milledgeville . Nine accepted pardons, but Worcester and Elizur Butler declined their pardons, so the Cherokee could take the case to the Supreme Court. William Wirt argued the case, but Georgia refused to have a legal counsel represent it, because the state believed the Supreme Court did not have authority to hear the case.

Decision

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Chief Justice John Marshall laid out in this opinion that the relationship between the Indian Nations and the United States is that of nations, consistent with the principles of the law of nations. He reasoned that the United States, in the character of the federal government, inherited the legal rights of The Crown . Those rights, he stated, included the sole right to negotiate with the Indian nations of North America, to the exclusion of all other European powers. 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.

Associate Justice Henry Baldwin dissented, stating that, in his opinion, the record was not properly returned upon the writ of error , and ought to have been returned by the State court of Georgia, and not by the clerk of the Court of Gwinnett County . As to the merits, he said that his opinion remained the same as was expressed by him in the case of the _Cherokee Nation v. Georgia _ in 1831.

Marshall's language in Worcester may have been motivated by his regret that his earlier opinions in _Fletcher v. Peck _ and _Johnson v. McIntosh _ had been used as a justification for Georgia's actions. Joseph Story considered it similarly, writing in a letter to his wife dated March 4, 1832: "Thanks be to God, the Court can wash their hands clean of the iniquity of oppressing the Indians and disregarding their rights."

Further information: [George "Corn" Tassel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_%22Corn%22_Tassel "George "Corn" Tassel")

Enforcement

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Samuel Worcester

In a popular quotation that is believed to be apocryphal, President Andrew Jackson reportedly responded: "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!"

This quotation first appeared twenty years after Jackson's death in newspaper publisher Horace Greeley 's 1864 history of the U.S. Civil War , The American Conflict. It was reported in the press in March 1832 that Jackson was unlikely to aid in carrying out the court's decision if his assistance were to be requested. In an April 1832 letter to John Coffee , Jackson wrote that "the decision of the Supreme Court has fell still born, and they find that they cannot coerce Georgia to yield to its mandate."

In a letter in March 1832, Virginia politician David Campbell reported a private conversation in which Jackson had "sportively" suggested calling on the Massachusetts state militia to enforce the order if the Supreme Court requested he intervene, because Jackson believed Northern partisans had brought about the court's ruling.

The Court did not ask federal marshals to carry out the decision. Worcester thus imposed no obligations on Jackson; there was nothing for him to enforce,

although Jackson's political enemies conspired to find evidence, to be used in the forthcoming political election , to claim that he would refuse to enforce the Worcester decision. Under the Judiciary Act of 1789 , Supreme Court cases were to be [remanded](htt

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