facilitating the transfer of property from Mexicans and Native Americans who didn’t have title to land or who held land collectively. The dispossessed appealed to U.S. courts. But in nearly all cases judges ruled against them. In upholding the takings, courts cited as precedent decades-old rulings issued in support of Jackson’s removal policy, including judgments that upheld the doctrine of discovery: “Conquest gives a title which the courts of the conqueror cannot deny.”14
