In 1831, in the case of Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, Chief Justice John Marshall had written that the Cherokee nation had ho standing in U.S. courts because the Cherokees were a "domestic dependent nation" who had been (along with other Indians) defined by the Constitution as foreign nationals'. The following year Marshall clarified his views about the power that a state had in an Indian nation in the case of Worcester v. Georgia, which sprang initially from the plaintiffs' refusal to sign an oath that the state of Georgia required for all whites who lived in Indian nations. Marshall's ruling in this case had a fundamental impact on American law, particularly his determination that states lacked jurisdiction over matters that took place in Indian nations. In his opinion he argued that states lacked this jurisdiction because historically Indian nations had been separate sovereign entities...