United States, Georgia, 32.75042, -83.50018Coenen, Dan T., 1952-2004-10-04Encyclopedia article about the case of Chisholm v. Georgia (1793). Chisholm v. Georgia is the most famous and the most important of the U.S. Supreme Court's eighteenth-century decisions. The Court's ruling arose out of the sale of supplies during the Revolutionary War (1775-83) made on credit to the state of Georgia by a South Carolina merchant, Captain Robert Farquhar. Georgia later refused to pay for the goods, because Farquhar was a British loyalist. After Farquhar died, however, the executor of his estate, Alexander Chisholm, who also hailed from South Carolina, brought an action on the still-uncollected account (as permitted by the then-operative federal jurisdictional statute) in the Supreme Court of the United States. Upon receiving notice of the action, Georgia refused to appear in court. It asserted that, as a sovereign state, it possessed immunity from the suit, absent its consent, even though Article III of the U.S. Constitution specifies that federal courts have jurisdiction to decide cases "between a State and citizens of another State." Citing this text, the Supreme Court rejected Georgia's sovereign-immunity argument and ordered Georgia to pay Chisholm the money damages he sought.text/htmlengForms part of the New Georgia Encyclopedia.http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/Forms part of the New Georgia Encyclopedia.Judgments--United StatesGeorgia--Privileges and immunitiesStates' rights (American politics)Chisholm v. Georgia (1793)Text