Talk:Worcester v. Georgia

"As had become standard", "A prudential decision", "Blatantly ignored", Renaming sections, and more

I am working on a substantial revision to this page, in the "Effects" and "Later events" sections, and have taken some of the claims out. Before I post the changes, I'm posting here to explain what I took out and why:

First, there was this claim in this Wikipedia entry:

The Court did not ask federal marshals to carry out the decision, as had become standard.

This claim cited pages 305-306 of the Ronald A. Berutti article "The Cherokee Cases: The Fight to Save the Supreme Court and the Cherokee Indians" as its source, where Berutti writes:

After they handing down the Worcester opinion, the Court, knowing that the President would probably not execute the law, did not follow the normal procedure of preparing a mandate requiring federal marshals to effectuate the decision.

However, this contradicts the Edwin A. Miles source that I will be adding. Looking at Berutti's source for this, he cites page 16 of the article "Politics as Law: The Cherokee Cases" by William F. Swindler, published in the Indian Law Review. At the time of writing, that Swindler article can be viewed here: [1]. The pertinent part of page 16 of the Swindler article reads:

John Marshall had made his decision; now Andrew Jackson had to make his-or so it seemed. The Court, in fact, did not force the issue; it neglected to prepare a new mandate which federal marshals would presumably have been required to enforce. Accordingly, the President was not compelled as a matter of law to do anything.

Thus, Berutti cites Swindler, but Swindler doesn't say that Supreme Court decisions being enforced immediately upon judgment was "standard" or "normal". He says that "presumably" federal marshals would be "required" to enforce it, but Swindler doesn't give any citation to back up this claim.

As such, I think the more reliable source is Miles, who writes:

Under the twenty-fifth section of the Judiciary Act of 1789 the Supreme Court could issue an order awarding final judgment only in a case which had already been remanded once without effect. Since the Supreme Court planned to recess shortly after it handed down the decision, no further action in the matter could take place until its next session in January 1833.

For this Miles, cites the actual Judiciary Act, as published in the Statutes at Large of the United States in 1845. This source is available from the Law Library of Congress here: [2].

The first part of Section 25 of that law is summarized in a side note:

Supreme court [is] not to issue execution but mandate

That is, when the Supreme Court decides a case that came to it from a lower court, it's supposed to remand the case back to the lower court for execution of the Supreme Court's judgment. But if already remanded once, and the Supreme Court's judgment wasn't executed, then the Judiciary Act contains this exception:

...the Supreme Court, instead of remanding the cause for a final decision as before provided, may at their discretion, if the cause shall have been once remanded before, proceed to a final decision of the same, and award execution.

Thus, I think Miles is the more reliable source on the matter, since his source says what he claims, while Berutti traces back to a source that says something different than what he claims, and the original source contains no citation.

That's a lot to go through for a four-word clause, haha. But I posted this in case there are questions. If someone objects and/or can find a better source than Berutti, then they can put it back in, but at the very least, it should be balanced with the opposing claim from Miles.

To put it more succinctly, this is a case of WP:Conflicting sources, but it is resolvable because there's an error in Berutti's ultimate source, but there is not in Miles. As WP:Conflicting sources states:

When several reliable sources conflict, some of those sources can sometimes be demonstrated to be factually erroneous, thus resolving the conflict.

I think that Miles is also backed up by the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court still operates this way. Except in rare cases where the court has original jurisdiction, the case is remanded back down to the lower court for final judgment and the Supreme Court only gets involved again if the lower court refuses to comply.

Therefore, the sentence will now read: "The Court did not ask federal marshals to carry out the decision." The final clause has been removed.

Second, before my edits, this Wikipedia entry contained the claim:

This 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.

For this, the citation was page 69 the Clifford M. Lytle article, "The Supreme Court, Tribal Sovereignty, and Continuing Problems of State Encroachment into Indian Country". However, when reading that article, the quote isn't about the case Worcester v. Georgia. It's about the case of Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, which was a previous Supreme Court case. This is a case of WP:SYNTH, specifically a violation of:

...do not combine different parts of one source to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by the source.

Therefore, I removed this sentence.

Third, before my edits, this Wikipedia entry contained the sentence:

Although it was blatantly ignored at the time, Worcester has been cited in several later opinions on the subject of tribal sovereignty in the United States.

The use of the word "blatantly" appears to be a violation of WP:NPOV. Further, the claim is wrong. As Miles says, and as the Stephen Breyer article says (which I will also be adding), as well as the Charles Warren source says, the Supreme Court's decision wasn't ignored. It just took almost a year to resolve the dispute between the federal government and the state of Georgia and get the judgment executed. Therefore, I have removed this initial clause, but have kept the rest of the sentence. It now reads: "Worcester has been cited in several later opinions on the subject of tribal sovereignty in the United States."

Fourth, I have renamed the Effects section to Enforcement, since that's what it's really about. And I have renamed Later events to Aftermath, because it better articulates that the section contains anything that happened subsequent to its final execution and the events of early 1833.

Everything else I changed, I did so for clarification purposes, since there is more information now.Mayor of awesometown (talk) 14:45, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Reference Request!!

The first sections of this article are severely lacking in references! Also, the citation style of the references that are there need to be cleaned up and updated. Thanks!! (I may come back someday and accomplish this, but until I retire in 25 years, I don't have time!) 97.95.245.22 (talk) 03:38, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

discombobulation request

Can someone make this sentence [more] intelligible?

"In doing so, Georgia underscored the reality of Worcester's true import: despite having no Indian litigants, and thus being incapable of bearing out a holding that could work in their favor in practice, when the decision was cited as precedent in later Indian decisions, like Johnson and Cherokee Nation that preceded it, the case would display inimitable destructive capacity." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Howetimothy (talk • contribs) 15:52, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Misplaced information?

Shouldn't the information about President Jackson's refusal to enforce the ruling be on the Cherokee Nation v. Georgia page? He made his comments in response to that decision, not this one. Correct me if I am missing something.

- It was in response to Worcester v Georgia. See Hall K, 'Jackson, Andrew', Oxford Companion to the United States Supreme Court (1ed) at 442.

-Yes, the person above me is correct

Recent Edits

Why were the references and footnotes deleted? No information was provided, and should be for such a change. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jaedglass (talk • contribs) 14:52, 30 September 2007 (UTC) Why can't you give accurate information? Hoo Hoo —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.153.119.48 (talk) 14:33, 7 February 2008 (UTC)