In the 1913 case Ross v. Day, the United States Supreme Court addressed a dispute over land ownership in Oklahoma. The plaintiff, Ross, claimed that he was entitled to certain lands under an agreement with the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations of Indians. However, these tribes had previously sold their rights to this land to another party who then transferred it to Day. The court ruled against Ross on two grounds: firstly because his claim was based on an unratified treaty which therefore did not have legal force; secondly because even if such a treaty were ratified it would be subject to existing laws governing Indian affairs which prohibited individual members of tribes from making separate agreements for tribal lands without consent from Congress or President.

In the dissenting opinion for Ross v. Day, Justice Holmes disagreed with the majority's decision to uphold a state law that allowed a man to be tried twice for the same offense if his first trial resulted in an acquittal due to insanity. He argued that this violated the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits anyone from being prosecuted twice for substantially the same crime. According to him, it was irrelevant whether or not Ross was sane at his first trial because he had already been acquitted and should therefore not have been subjected to another prosecution on essentially identical charges. Furthermore, he contended that allowing such retrials would undermine public confidence in judicial decisions by suggesting they could always be revisited and potentially overturned based on new evidence or arguments about a defendant’s mental health status.