What is the yazoo controversy?

Answer 1

Fletcher v. Peck, 10 U.S. 87 (1810), was a landmark United States Supreme Court decision. It was the first case in which the Supreme Court ruled a state law unconstitutional. In the course of the westward push for the control of Indian lands, the state of Georgia took from the Indians a 35,000,000-acre (140,000 km2) region in the Yazoo River area known as the Yazoo Lands. This land later became the states of Alabama and Mississippi. In 1795 the Georgia legislature divided the area into four tracts. The state then sold the tracts to four separate land development companies for a modest total price of $500,000, i.e. about 1.4 cents per acre, a good deal even at 1790s prices. The Georgia legislature overwhelmingly approved this land grant, known as the Yazoo Land Act of 1795. The case grew out of the 1795 Georgia state legislature's sale of land in the Yazoo River country (in what is now Mississippi) under the Yazoo Land Act of 1795 to private speculators in return for bribes. Voters rejected most of the incumbents in the next election, and the next legislature, reacting to the public outcry, repealed the law and voided transactions made under it. John Peck had purchased land that had previously been sold under the 1795 act. Peck sold this land to Robert Fletcher and in 1803, Fletcher brought suit against Peck, claiming that he did not have clear title to the land when he sold it. The case reached the Supreme Court, which in a unanimous decision ruled that the state legislature's repeal of the law was unconstitutional. The opinion, written by John Marshall, argued that the sale was a binding contract, which according to Article I, Section 10, Clause I (the Contract Clause) of the Constitution cannot be invalidated, even if illegally secured. Today the ruling further protects property rights against popular pressures, and is the earliest case of the Court asserting its right to invalidate state laws conflicting with the Constitution.