#marshalltrilogy

The Marshall Trilogy Part 2: Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831)

For the second part of our series on the Marshall Trilogy, we look into Cherokee Nation v. Georgia. In December of 1829, the state of Georgia enacted a series of laws that stripped rights from the Cherokee people, calculated to force them off their lands. The Cherokee Nation, led by Chief John Ross, sought an injunction to block those laws from going into effect. In May of 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into law, authorizing the President to set aside lands west of the Mississippi for the tribes. The Cherokee refused to agree to the conditions of Jackson’s treaties and attempted to defend their land claims in the courts.

The case wound its way through the court system, eventually ending up in front of John Marshall and the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court eventually ruled that the tribes did not have the standing to sue as a foreign nation, although they were not found to be “a distinct political society, separated from others, capable of managing its own affairs and governing itself.” Their relationship to the United States was described by Marshall in his opinion as that “of a ward to its guardian.” The case left open the potential to hear the Cherokee Nation’s case in the future, if they found a “proper case with proper parties”—something they would attempt the following year in Worchester v. Georgia, the final case of the Marshall Trilogy.