Anderson v. Dunn The House of Representatives charged John Anderson with contempt for insulting the House. Anderson had asked Rep. Louis Williams of North Carolina to help him recover property in Mic . . .
Bank of the United States v. Deveaux Like Strawbridge v. Curtiss, 7 U.S. 267 (1806), this case involved the interpretation of the “diversity” clause of the Constitution, which provides th . . .
Barron v. Baltimore John Barron owned a wharf in Baltimore. The wharf became virtually worthless after city construction projects made the water surrounding it too shallow for most ships. Barron clai . . .
Cherokee Nation v. Georgia Cherokee Nation v. Georgia marked the beginning of a tragedy of national scale, leading to the forced removal of hundreds of thousands of Native Americans from the eastern . . .
Dartmouth College v. Woodward In 1754 Rev. Eleazer Wheelock founded a school to train missionaries and provide education for American Indians. English benefactors—including Lord Dartmouth— . . .
Ex parte Bollman After leaving the vice presidency in 1805, Aaron Burr traveled west, where he apparently planned to engage in land speculation while also organizing frontiersmen and others in prepar . . .
Fairfax's Devisee v. Hunter's Lessee This case grew out of litigation surrounding the vast estates—approximately 300,000 acres of land—granted to Thomas, Lord Fairfax, a Virginia loyalist . . .
Fletcher v. Peck This case grew out of the sale of about 35 million acres of land along the Yazoo River in western Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. In what became known as the Yazoo land fraud, in . . .
Gibbons v. Ogden In 1808 the New York legislature granted Robert R. Livingston and Robert Fulton a thirty-year monopoly over steamboat transportation on all state waters and all steamboat transportat . . .
Martin v. Hunter's Lessee This case was the culmination of more than twenty years of litigation involving the status of vast lands in Virginia owned by Thomas, Lord Fairfax, who fled to England durin . . .
McCulloch v. Maryland In perhaps his greatest opinion and one of the most important “state papers” of American constitutional law, Chief Justice Marshall upheld the constitutionality of t . . .
Ogden v. Saunders Ogden v. Saunders was the only constitutional law case of Chief Justice Marshall's career in which he dissented. Oddly, his dissent left the Court without any leadership, and each . . .
Sturges v. Crowninshield Richard Crowninshield, a boyhood friend of Justice Story, was a flamboyant entrepreneur who moved to New York and in 1811 declared bankruptcy under a state law of April 3 of . . .
Willson v. Black Bird Creek Marsh Co. In 1822 Delaware authorized Black Bird Creek Marsh Company to construct a dam across Black Bird Creek, which obstructed navigation there. Thompson Willson, who h . . .
Worcester v. Georgia In 1831 Georgia authorities arrested Samuel A. Worcester, a Congregational minister, for preaching on Cherokee lands without first obtaining a state license to reside on those la . . .