USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in the majority opinion that the Constitution gave to Congress, not the states, the power to make laws that applied to the Indian tribes. Despite this clear court victory for the Cherokees, Jackson openly refused to enforce it, and the Southern states ignored it.

Detailed explanation-2: -In Worcester v. Georgia, the court struck down Georgia’s extension laws. In the majority opinion Marshall wrote that the Indian nations were “distinct, independent political communities retaining their original natural rights” and that the United States had acknowledged as much in several treaties with the Cherokees.

Detailed explanation-3: -It is not unusual to find John Marshall lauded as the “greatest judicial advocate of Indian sovereignty."1 Three seminal Supreme Court opinions authored by him–Johnson v. McIntosh (1823), Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831), and Worcester v.

Detailed explanation-4: -President Andrew Jackson ignored the Court’s decision in Worcester v. Georgia, but later issued a proclamation of the Supreme Court’s ultimate power to decide constitutional questions and emphasizing that its decisions had to be obeyed.

Detailed explanation-5: -In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831), however, Chief Justice John Marshall declared that because Indian nations were dependent entities, they had no standing before the judiciary. The Court, therefore, lacked jurisdiction to exempt the Cherokees from Georgia law.