The Doctrine of Discovery is a legal principle that still informs American jurisprudence. In the 1828 Supreme Court case Johnson v. M'Intosh, "Chief Justice John Marshall justified the way in which colonial powers laid claim to lands belonging to sovereign indigenous nations during the Age of Discovery. Under it, title to lands lay with the government whose subjects explored and occupied a territory whose inhabitants were not subjects of a European Christian monarch. The origins of the doctrine can be traced to Pope Nicholas V's issuance of the papal bull Romanus Pontifex in 1455."

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