Aboriginal title in the Taney Court
Open-knowledge reference entry
The Supreme Court of the United States, under Chief Justice Roger B. Taney (1836–1864), issued several important decisions on the status of aboriginal title in the United States, building on the opinions of aboriginal title in the Marshall Court.
The Taney Court heard Fellows v. Blacksmith (1857) and New York ex rel. Cutler v. Dibble (1858), the first two aboriginal title cases involving indigenous plaintiffs to reach the Supreme Court since Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1830), and the first two cases won by indigenous parties in the Supreme Court. In Marsh v. Brooks (1850), in dicta, the Court declared: "That an action of ejectment could be maintained on an Indian right to occupancy and use, is not open to question."
The remaining cases involved no indigenous parties. In United States v. Brooks (1850), the Court refused to inquire into allegations of fraud on the part of Commissioner Jehiel Brooks in negotiating a treaty with the Caddo.
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This entry incorporates text from “Aboriginal title in the Taney Court” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.