In The Supreme Court Of Tennessee At Jackson: Fill & Download for Free

Completely ignoring a Supreme Court rulingA lot of Andrew Jackson stuff already, but I think this was the most risky, and most controversial thing he did.In 1832, in Worcester v. Georgia, the Supreme Court decided in favor of the Cherokee Nation against the state of Georgia, and essentially stated that the Georgia criminal statute that outlawed Native Americans living on their own land, was unconstitutional.Rather than abiding by the Supreme Court decision, Andrew Jackson ignored it completely (risking impeachment, prison... who knows being charged with treason?) and wrote in a letter to John Coffee, a Tennessee Militia General:"the decision of the Supreme Court has fell still born, and they find that they cannot coerce Georgia to yield to its mandate"Essentially the Supreme Court decision is pointless because they have no power to enforce it.Andrew Jackson then continued to use elements of the military and state militias to remove various Native American populations from the East Coast of the US to the Oklahoma Badlands in the Trail of Tears.

If you want to get down to the lowest level, the Supreme Court doesn’t have any enforcement power beyond the nine of them going around and beating people up. To get to that point, though, things would have to be pretty bad. Luckily, while things have gotten dicey a few times, we’ve never really gone over that cliff.First, let’s unpack part of the question here: have Supreme Court decisions ever really been straight-up ignored? Yeah, maybe. But have any Supreme Court orders been ignored? That’s a bit trickier. The answer is not a definite yes, and that wiggle room means everything. The two famous examples people trot out are from before (or during) the Civil War. Those are Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515 (1832), and Ex parte Merryman, 17 F. Cas. 144 (1861). But it’s not really that simple.MerrymanLet’s start with Merryman, because that’s the easier one. Well, it’s easily the more complicated one, at least. It was an opinion by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (Roger Taney) in the opening days of the civil war that Lincoln couldn’t suspend habeas corpus. Habeas Corpus is one of our fundamental (or oldest, at least) rights, that, basically, means anyone in custody can ask a court to make the government explain why they’re in custody. If the government can’t, then they have to let you go.But, even though it was by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, it’s not clear that Merryman was actually a Supreme Court decision. Back in the old days, judges used to “ride circuit,” which meant that they’d go around to the local Circuit Courts (the courts in between the Federal trial courts and the Supreme Court) and hear the intermediate appeals.So, in Merryman, the government locked up Merryman, a Lieutenant in the militia, for obeying the order of the governor of Maryland to impede the travel of Federal troops through the state. Lt. Merryman filed for habeas corpus, and he filed it directly with Justice Taney. Now, this is normally not the order you do things, and for most cases, that would mean that Justice Taney would have just ignored or dismissed the filing. But habeas corpus is special, remember, and that means that in most places, including the Federal system (at least at the time), basically every judge can hear habeas petitions.Justice Taney told them to bring Merryman to court. They didn’t. Justice Taney ordered the marshals to do it. They still didn’t bring Merryman to court, under President Lincoln’s orders. They even very nearly arrested Justice Taney (but, luckily, things did not go that far).So, Merryman filed for habeas with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who also sat on the Circuit Court. And Justice Taney filed his opinion in the Circuit Court. So, while it’s clear he had authority, it’s not clear exactly what authority he was exercising. It’s clear that the government ignored a court, which is bad, but it was only a decision of one judge of the Court. Merryman’s next step should have been to move for contempt, or petition the Supreme Court itself (although it’s not immediately clear what the jurisdictional basis would have been, and that’s a discussion for another time, they probably would have come up with one if they really wanted to hear a case about the Federal government ignoring a habeas order).WorcesterLet’s go back to Worcester, the case during President Jackson’s term. Now, the full case name for Worcester is Worcester v. Georgia. Worcester invalidated a Georgia State law. Georgia wanted to get rid of the Cherokee. The State passed a law to do it. The Supreme Court pointed out (or decided) that the States didn’t have that sort of power, only the feds. The only thing the decision actually ordered, though, was that the appellant be freed by Georgia. Mr. Worcester was freed, eventually, and not exactly on the no-haggle terms the Supreme Court imposed, but he did get out of jail. Fine.Now, at the same time, President Jackson was moving to get rid of the Cherokee and move them to Oklahoma. (You may recognize this as the “Trail of Tears.” The Trail of Tears was, essentially, a horrific death-march that, just because I don’t get into more, doesn’t mean I don’t think was in any way acceptable.) This is the part that most people remember. President Jackson had been using the Georgia law as an excuse, but he didn’t have that any more. Even so, the Court didn’t actually order President Jackson to do or not do anything—neither the President nor the Country were parties to the case. And, maybe to avoid having an order ignored, the Court hadn’t ordered the feds to enforce the decision (which they usually did).President Jackson ignored the decision, but he didn’t ignore the order. Someone could have brought suit against the President and the Country and the people marching the Cherokee out to Oklahoma. If the Court kept with its precedent, they would have ordered a halt to it, and then we’d have had the real test. But they didn’t.So, we have two cases where the President ignored something it was clear they were supposed to do, but both times they had legal grounds to claim a gray area. In both cases, the Court maybe didn’t actually order the thing that the President didn’t do, but just pointed out that the President was doing it wrong. It’s a fine point, and it might not satisfy you, but it’s better than nothing.Things Going RightThings go right a lot more often than they go wrong, with obedience to the Court. Let’s look at a couple of examples where people got it right (eventually, at least).United States v. ShippUnited States v. Shipp, 203 U.S. 563 (1906). This one is cool because it’s the only criminal case in Supreme Court history (well, the only criminal case within the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction). It’s not cool because it involved a lynching (it was 1906 in Chattanooga, Tennessee). Anyway, Ed Johnson (a black man in the South) was sentenced to death. He appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court. It was initially denied, but he was given an extra ten days to throw together something better than what he had. That time was enough, and the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. The Supreme Court did not get to hear the case.The town of Chattanooga (where Mr. Johnson was being held) got wind of the decision the same day (because of telegrams and such). Despite knowing of the likelihood of mob violence (and probably hoping for it), Sheriff Shipp didn’t do anything to protect Mr. Johnson. Anyone with legal knowledge was probably afraid that Mr. Johnson would win his appeal.Sidebar: Mr. Johnson had not gotten access to counsel, and there was no one black who made it anywhere near his jury. Laws excluding jurors by race were already not allowed. See Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303 (1880). But most places just had neutral-sounding laws and did it anyway. Mr. Johnson challenged that, and his access to counsel, among other things. These arguments wouldn’t get up to the Court again for a while, but in 1935, they won the day. See Norris v. Alabama, 294 U.S. 587 (1935) (can’t exclude people from juries based on race); Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45 (1932) (effective assistance of counsel).Sidebar aside, the Supreme Court was rather upset with the Sheriff (and everyone else involved). They brought him (and some mob members and deputies) up for contempt, basically for making it so that they would be unable to hear Mr. Johnson’s case (by letting him die horribly/encouraging his horrible death/murdering him horribly). Now, they didn’t actually do a trial in the Supreme Court building, they just had a local judge do the fact-finding and then they made their decision, but they sentenced several of the guys to a few months in prison (remember, they weren’t on trial for murder, just contempt, as unfair as that is), and they served their time (well, some of it, they got out early for good behavior).Depressingly, Sheriff Shipp got a hero’s welcome when he got back into town. But, the takeaway for us is that when the Supreme Court did something it had never done before, and directly sentenced someone to jail, the guy went to jail.Other stuffI’m not going to list everything between Shipp and Bush v. Gore, but here are a couple more when the Court has ordered something, and people have done it: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) (and all the other civil rights cases) (some of the states pushed back like hell, but the federal government stepped in and made them follow the courts’ orders); Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952) (people know this as the “Steel Seizure Case”) (during the Korean War, President Truman semi-nationalized the steel industry, and that upset some people; even though it was wartime, when the Supreme Court told him to back down, he backed down); and United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683 (1974) (the President of the United States followed an order that he had to know would lead to the early end of his presidency—if Nixon had just destroyed the tapes and said he never had them (or couldn’t find them), we might still be arguing about it, but we wouldn’t have had the smoking gun that got rid of him).Bush v. GoreI’m not going to take as much time explaining this as some of the others, but it does deserve its own little section. Basically, when the Supreme Court decided, in a hurry, essentially that George W. Bush would be the next President (it’s actually more complicated than that, and involved having recounts going in democratic-leaning places, but not elsewhere), people grumbled and protested, but guess who the President was. Al Gore even presided over the certification of the electoral college results.Stop and think about that. The guy won the popular vote. The guy thought that the Supreme Court had wrongly stopped the recount that would have given him the win (I think the current consensus is that Bush still would have won, barely, but still). Twenty members of Congress stood up and objected during that certification, and Gore ruled them all out of order (they were, because no Senator objected with, but still). Dude certified the winner as the guy who lost the popular vote to him, because the Supreme Court said to stop counting. That’s some faith in the system.Actually Answer Your Question:So, basically, the Supreme Court’s only real enforcement power (until Ruth Bader Ginsburg puts on a cape and a mask and goes around enforcing compliance, if she’s not already) is telling people what to do. But we do it, because the other option is that law and order breaks down entirely, and someone with more of a propensity and knack for violence decides that they like my stuff and comes and takes it. So, I sure as hell am going to work with the system we have, as opposed to ignoring it when it suits me. The alternative is that people do whatever they think they can get away with, and then they get away with it because who’s going to tell them not to.The Supreme Court’s enforcement power is people like me and you keeping people in power honest by voting, protesting, videotaping, and stuff like that. When you see someone in power not following the rules and you do something about it, that’s you doing your part to enforce the Supreme Court’s authority.Oh, and they can tell Federal Marshals to go and make people do stuff. They also have that.This answer is a reuse of one of my earliest Quora Answers, which I still like:Stephen Rigg's answer to What enforcement powers does the U.S. Supreme Court possess?Come on, they’re totally wearing superhero outfits under those robes. (Justices)

I can think of at least 3 historical cases where this has not been true and I will elaborate.Meet Andrew Jackson. Seventh President of the United States and a Senator of Tennessee. Andrew was framed as a tyrant by some and a hero by others for a multitude of different reasons. But one of the main reasons he was called a tyrant was because of his response to a Supreme Court case, Worcester v. Georgia. [1]Worcester was arrested for disobeying Georgia’s law that forbid white missionaries from living in Cherokee territory without a state license. Worcester went on to win this case but the lasting impact of the case was, it established that US laws did not apply in Native American territory and that only the Federal Government could negotiate with Native Tribes.Andrew Jackson’s response to this case(it’s not entirely confirmed he said this but it wouldn’t be unlike him to say this) was “John Marshall(Chief Justice at the time) has made his decision, let him enforce it”.Andrew Jackson was open about defying the Supreme Court and he firmly executed his Executive Power with the Indian Removal Act in 1830. Here you can see that the sword has won over the pen.My next case is the Dred Scott case. Dred Scott was a slave from St Louis and his master moved him to Wisconsin where he later died. Dred tried to buy his freedom after his master died on the grounds that state law in Wisconsin prohibited slavery;but his new master refused. The case was later brought to the Supreme Court.The court ruled the following: “In the opinion of the court, the legislation and histories of the times, and the language used in the Declaration of Independence, show, that neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves, nor their descendants, whether they had become free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in that memorable instrument...They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit."[2] -Roger Taney, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.This decision was massively protested in the North and was purposely neglected . The court decision was so infuriating that many Northerns started to believe the Supreme Court was run by corrupt slave owners.So in this instance we see with the North refusing to support the Supreme Court’s decision AND other laws like the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850[3]. Here I want to propose the idea that Supreme Court decisions are only relevant when society deems them so.Finally my last point which I am primarily reminded of because of my friend Shaheer Hashmi, the Brown vs Board Of Education case.In this case the Supreme Court ruled for the desegregation of US schools country wide.[4] A good step towards racial equality. But this decision was contested and ignored for a few years. Eventually Dwight D. Eisenhower decided it was time for integration.On September 23rd 1957, Eisenhower issued a proclamation demanding that anyone blocking the students from entering to let them in. When his order wasn’t followed, he federalized the Arkansas National Guard the next day.The decision came down in 1954 and was basically ignored until 1957. A Supreme Court decision was ignored. Only when armed soldiers were sent in was the decision actually enforced.It’s quite obvious here that not only was the Sword required, society also was forced to accept it.I want to leave you with a quote that I feel sums up the Supreme Court very well.“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” - The Declaration Of Independence.The Supreme Court can decide all it wants, but if the people don’t accept it, it will be ignored.Footnotes[1] Worcester v. Georgia | United States law case[2] "No Rights Which the White Man was Bound to Respect" | ACS[3] Fugitive Slave Acts - Black History - HISTORY.com[4] Brown v. Board of Education - Black History - HISTORY.com