The third case in the Marshall Trilogy!

This is the 3rd case dealing with native americans in the newly formed USA.
Here is the Lexisnexis rundown:
In this case, the Cherokee nation sought an injunction to prevent the state from enforcing its laws in the Cherokee nation's territory. The Cherokee nation argued that it was a distinct state, as a political society, separated from the others, capable of managing its own affairs and governing itself.
It also argued that it was not a state of the union and insisted that individually they were aliens, not owing any allegiance to the United States. An aggregate of aliens composing a state must, it alleged, be a foreign state. Each individual being foreign, the whole must have been foreign. The Court denied the Cherokee nation's motion for an injunction. The Court held that the Constitution, which empowered Congress to regulate commerce, specifically treated the Cherokee nation as distinct from a foreign nation.
The Court found that an Indian tribe or nation within the United States was not a foreign state within the meaning of the Constitution. Thus, the Court concluded that because the Constitution did not comprehend Indian tribes in the general term "foreign nations," the Cherokee nation was not foreign to the United States.

Next time, I will discuss what this case means. It's a biggie, in setting the foundation for Indian law in the future...