Or in the case of the Trail of Tears, President Andrew Jackson did what he wanted and ignored the Supreme Court ruling in Worcester v. Georgia (1832), held that Georgia could not extend its law over the sovereign lands of the Cherokee nation, and had no authority to displace the indigenous people.

Jackson really exposed the dangers of what a truly corrupt person could do with potus power when all the accepted racism lined up. For all its democracy and rule of law talk, the US is held together just barely by most people agreeing to the ideas they say they believe in when it's convenient.