Worcester v. Georgia facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Worcester v. Georgia |
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| Argued February 20, 1832 Decided March 3, 1832 |
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| Full case name | Samuel S. Worcester v. State of Georgia |
| Citations | 31 U.S. 515 (more)
6 Pet. 515; 8 L. Ed. 483
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| Prior history | Plaintiff convicted in Gwinnett County, Georgia by the Georgia Superior Court (September 15, 1831) |
| Subsequent history | None |
| Holding | |
| Worcester's conviction is void because states have no criminal jurisdiction in Indian Country. | |
| Court membership | |
| 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 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.
The opinion is most famous for its dicta, which laid out the relationship between tribes and the state and federal governments. It is considered to have built the foundations of the doctrine of tribal sovereignty in the United States.
Aftermath
On December 29, 1835, members of the Cherokee nation signed the controversial removal treaty, the Treaty of New Echota, which was immediately protested by the large majority of the Cherokees. Samuel Worcester moved to the Cherokee nation's western Indian Territory in 1836, after removal had commenced. Worcester resumed his ministry, continued translating the Bible into Cherokee, and established the first printing press in that part of the United States, working with the Cherokee to publish their newspaper.
In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Supreme Court in United States History, Charles Warren asserted that the sequence of events in the aftermath of the Worcester case allowed the Supreme Court to go from its lowest point in history in late 1832, to its strongest position in fifteen years by early 1833. In 2000, Justice Stephen Breyer observed that the Supreme Court was an "obvious winner" in the case once its judgment was enforced, but the Cherokee nation was the "obvious loser" since the judgment did not benefit them in any way. Because Jackson proceeded with Cherokee removal, Worcester did not aid indigenous rights at the time. Removal of the Cherokee nation would begin just three years after Samuel Worcester and Elizur Butler were released from Georgia prison, and forced migration would commence via the Trail of Tears in 1838.
Worcester has been cited in several later opinions on the subject of tribal sovereignty in the United States. In 2022, the Court ruled on Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta, a case that resulted from the Court's earlier decision in McGirt v. Oklahoma that the tribal lands in the eastern half of Oklahoma had never been deestablished by Congress, and as a result, crimes committed on tribal lands by Native Americans were considered to be covered by tribal and federal jurisdiction rather than the state. Castro-Huertra was decided to clarify that crimes committed by non-Native Americans on tribal lands would have simultaneous jurisdiction by both federal and state. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing the majority in Castro-Huetra, stated that "the Worcester-era understanding of Indian country as separate from the State was abandoned later in the 1800s", based on both United States v. McBratney and Draper v. United States.
In popular culture
The play Sovereignty by Mary Kathryn Nagle portrays the historic circumstances surrounding the case.
