ABSTRACT
The two most notorious cases upholding the nation's treatment of blacks, Dred Scott v. Sandford and Plessy v. Ferguson, are universally condemned. But at the time of their decision, they were accepted as valid and even inevitable constitutional renderings. In the early 1800s a young, expansion-minded government sought to justify subjugation of the Native American race in the interest of progress. Control over the lands and lives of Indians were necessary for the development that founding fathers foresaw. The 1823 decision in Johnson v. M'Intosh gave Chief Justice John Marshall a vehicle for articulating the principles of what was to become an elaborate body of law governing the Indians. In the late 1800s, labor unrest and economic dislocation fueled a growing xenophobia, including demands that immigration of nonwhite populations be curtailed. The Chinese Exclusion Case, Chae Chan Ping v. United States, was decided in the midst of this nativist resurgence.
