Читать книгу The Handy Supreme Court Answer Book - David L Hudson - Страница 238

The only major decision that Chief Justice Marshall found himself in dissent was the Court’s 1827 in Ogden v. Saunders. The Court was asked to decide whether a state bankruptcy law violated the Contract Clause for contracts that were entered after the passage of the law. The Court ruled 4–3 that state bankruptcy laws were constitutional as applied to contracts passed after the legislation. The case involved George Ogden, a New Yorker, who sought to discharge his debt to John Saunders of Kentucky. The majority of four believed that a state had the power to pass a bankruptcy law and that such a law did not violate the Contract Clause for contracts passed after the bankruptcy law. All four justices in the majority wrote separate opinions.

CourtSpeak: Worcester v. Georgia Cherokee Sovereign Authority Case (1831)

Chief Justice John Marshall (majority): “The Cherokee Nation, then, is a distinct community, occupying its own territory, with boundaries accurately described, in which the laws of Georgia can have no force, and which the citizens of Georgia have no right to enter but with the assent of the Cherokees themselves or in conformity with treaties and with the acts of Congress. The whole intercourse between the United States and this nation is, by our Constitution and laws, vested in the government of the United States.”