to have rendered, and issue execution, or remand the cause to it
with directions that this be done. If the latter course be
taken, the directions may be disobeyed. A Georgia court was
guilty of this contumacy in the case of Worcester _v._
Georgia.[Footnote: 6 Peters' Reports, 515, 596.] If the former
course be taken, the service of the execution may be resisted by
the power of the State.

Worcester was illegally confined in the Georgia penitentiary.
The sentence against him had been set aside and the indictment
adjudged to furnish no ground of prosecution. But if the Supreme
Court had rendered a judgment dismissing the prosecution, and
given a writ to the marshal directing him to set Worcester at
liberty, the officer would have found the prison doors shut in
his face. Every prison is a fortress, so built as to prevent
rescue from without as well as escape from within. To lay siege
to one would be too great an enterprise for the marshal to
undertake without military assistance. For this the President
could have been called upon. But he might have refused it. If
so, the judgment of the judicial department would have proved
inoperative, simply because the officer charged with the duty of
rendering it operative had declined to fulfil that duty.

The Supreme Court, in the Worcester case, probably had reason to
believe that if it had directed a call on President Jackson for a
military force it would have been refused. It is reported that
the President, in private conversation, intimated as much.
Possibly he might have been justified in the refusal. South
Carolina was on the brink of war with the United States. Georgia
was her next neighbor, and might have been induced to make common