Lindsday Robertson

Professor Lindsay G. Robertson joined the law faculty in 1997. He teaches courses in Federal Indian Law, Comparative and International Indigenous Peoples Law, Constitutional Law and Legal History and serves as Faculty Director of the Center for the Study of American Indian Law and Policy and Founding Director of the International Human Rights Law Clinic.

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 The episode begins with Prof. Robertson providing the context for Johnson v. M’Intosh, Chief Justice John Marshall and the Marshall trilogy, which is Johnson v M’Intosh, 21 US (8 Wheat) 543 (1823), Cherokee Nation v Georgia, 30 US (5 Pet) 1 (1831) and Worcester v Georgia, 31 US (6 Pet) 515 (1832). Early in Prof. Robertson’s career, he was looking to do a history, and he knew these three cases so he began looking into them and began wondering what was the history and story behind the cases. As he dug into the archives, he realized that there were significant gaps in the archive. An Archives at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania helped him get into touch with Jasper Brinton, whose ancestor had been secretary of the land companies at the center of the case. It turns out that the family had preserved the documents and had an incredible archive of the materials necessary to write a history of the Johnson decision. The United Illinois and Wabash Land Companies Collection is available online and thanks to Brinton, Robertson, and the librarians at the University of Oklahoma this open-access resource is available for free online. We encourage you to please avail yourself of it as you listen to the episode.

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