| Worcester v. Georgia | ||||||
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Supreme Court of the United States |
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| Argued February 20, 1832 Decided March 3, 1832 |
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| Full case name | Samuel A. Worcester v. Georgia | |||||
| Citations | 31 U.S. 515 (more) 8 L. Ed. 483 |
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| Prior history | Plaintiff convicted in Gwinnett County, Georgia by the Georgia Superior Court (Sept. 15, 1831) | |||||
| Subsequent history | None | |||||
| Holding | ||||||
| Worcester's conviction is void, because states have no criminal jurisdiction in Indian Country | ||||||
| Court membership | ||||||
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| Case opinions | ||||||
| Majority | Marshall, joined by Johnson, Duvall, Story, Thompson | |||||
| Concurrence | McLean | |||||
| Dissent | Baldwin | |||||
| Laws applied | ||||||
| U.S. Const. art. I | ||||||
Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. (6 Pet.) 515 (1832), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court vacated the conviction of Samuel Worcester and held that the Georgia criminal statute that prohibited non-Indians from being present on Indian lands without a license from the state was unconstitutional.
The opinion is most famous for its dicta, which lay out the relationship between tribes and the state and federal governments, building the foundations of the doctrine of tribal sovereignty in the United States.
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Georgia passed laws restricting the right to take away the authority of the Cherokee over their lands. Among these was a law requiring all whites living in Cherokee Indian Territory, including missionaries and persons married to Cherokee, to obtain a state license to live there. After seven missionaries refused to obtain licenses, they were arrested, convicted, and sentenced to four years of hard labor. They refused to obey the military when they were asked to leave the state. They appealed their case to the United States Supreme Court, arguing that the law under which they had been convicted was unconstitutional because states have no authority to pass laws concerning sovereign Indian Nations.
The missionaries Samuel Worcester and Elizur Butler were arrested by Georgia because of their opposition to Cherokee removal. If they had applied for state licenses, they would have been denied. The Georgia state courts had previously deferred to Worcester because of his federal appointment as postmaster to New Echota, the Cherokee capital. However, George Rockingham Gilmer, the governor of Georgia, persuaded the federal government to withdraw Worcester's appointment as postmaster in order to make him subject to arrest.
Chief Justice John Marshall laid out in this opinion the relationship between the Indian Nations and the United States is that of nations. He argued 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, are the sole right of dealing with the Indian nations in North America, to the exclusion of any other European power, and not 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 not the states.
The court ruled that the Cherokee Nation was a "distinct community" with self-government "in which the laws of Georgia can have no force." It established the doctrine that the national government of the United States, and not individual states, had authority in American Indian affairs.
In a popular fictitious quotation, President Andrew Jackson is supposed to have said: "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!". This derives from Jackson's consideration on the case in a letter to John Coffee, "...the decision of the Supreme Court has fell still born, and they find that they cannot coerce Georgia to yield to its mandate," (that is, the Court's opinion was moot because it had no power to enforce its edict).[1]
The ruling in Worcester ordered that Worcester be freed; Georgia complied after several months. In 1833, the newly elected governor, Wilson Lumpkin, offered to pardon Worcester and Butler if they ceased their activities among the Cherokee. The two complied and were freed (under the authority of a January 14, 1833 general proclamation, not a formal pardon);[2] they never returned to Cherokee lands.
The federal government and the Cherokee were not party to the suit. Worcester imposed no obligations on Jackson; there was nothing for him to enforce.[3][4] The Court did not ask federal marshals to carry out the decision, as had become standard.[5] Worcester may be seen as a prudential decision, for avoiding the possibility of political conflict between the Court and the Executive, while still delivering what appeared to be a pro-Indian decision.[6]
Marshall's language in Worcester may have been motivated by his regret that his earlier opinions in Fletcher and Johnson had been used as a justification for Georgia's actions. Justice 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."[7] Because Jackson proceeded with Cherokee removal, Worcester did little more for indigenous rights than Johnson v. M'Intosh or Cherokee Nation v. Georgia.[8][9]
In 1835, a dissident faction of Cherokee signed a removal treaty, the Treaty of New Echota. Jackson lobbied the U.S. Senate to ratify the treaty in 1836, where it passed by a majority of one vote. In 1838, under President Martin Van Buren, the U.S. Army forcibly relocated the Cherokee to Indian Territory (part of present-day Oklahoma), in what would become known as the Trail of Tears.
Worcester is cited in several later opinions on the subject of tribal sovereignty in the United States.
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