Courts must enforce conqueror titles regardless of the claim’s original justice.

Evidence

We will not enter into the controversy whether agriculturists, merchants, and manufacturers have a right on abstract principles to expel hunters from the territory they possess or to contract their limits. Conquest gives a title which the courts of the conqueror cannot deny, whatever the private and speculative opinions of individuals may be, respecting the original justice of the claim which has been successfully asserted. … It is not for the courts of this country to question the validity of this title or to sustain one which is incompatible with it. — Supreme Court of the United States (Marshall Court, 1823), Johnson & Graham’s Lessee v. M’Intosh,…, 240

Categorization

• XREF: The positivist ‘courts cannot deny conquest’ stance reframes law/institutions — the polyad thread asking whether law tracks justice or just power — echoed in LGST 1110’s treatment of legal reasoning. — connects to: Unjust conquest confers no right over the conquered — John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, 222
• DEEPTHINKING: Marshall’s starkest move: he refuses even to debate whether agriculture justifies expelling hunters, then declares the question moot because conquest itself gives a title courts must not deny — separating corrective justice from legal validity at the founding of American property law.
• DEFINE: Establishes the discovery doctrine’s operative meaning: title by conquest is validated not by its justice but by the incapacity of courts to refuse it.

Broader Connections

• Unjust conquest confers no right over the conquered #contradicts (0.95) — John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, 222