Blacks and Indians before the Antebellum U.S. Supreme Court.
- Resource Type
- Article
- Authors
- Goldstein, Leslie
- Source
- Law & Society. 2008 Annual Meeting, p1. 0p.
- Subject
- *ACTIONS & defenses (Law)
*LEGAL status of indigenous peoples
*NATIVE American tribal governments
- Language
In the 1830s John Marshall handed down opinions in American Indian Cases that attempted (in vain) to safeguard the rights of native Americans against a hostile Georgia white population, legislature and governor. His opinions relied in considerable part on legal doctrines purporting to check state power as against federal power on the subject. In the 1840s Justice Story issued the Court opinion for Prigg v. Pennsylvania, an opinion that his son William later characterized as an attempt to sabotage the efficacy of the Fugitive Slave Act. The purportedly sabotaging section of this opinion, which would have helped prevent the recapture of fugitive slaves by reducing the number of judges available for the endeavor, relied on legal doctrines of states rights to exempt themselves from being "commandeered" by the federal government into such assistance. The constant between the two cases is that the Court is acting to help a racial minority against oppressive majority action. What changes between the two is the endorsement of states' rights. This paper will explore the possibility that the antebellum Court was manipulating legal doctrine for a desired policy outcome. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]