Читать книгу Keeping the Republic - Christine Barbour - Страница 113

John Marshall, the third chief justice of the United States, was a man committed to the Federalist narrative about strong national power. His rulings did much to strengthen the power of the national government both during his lifetime and after. The 1819 case of McCulloch v. Maryland set the tone. In resolving this dispute about whether Congress had the power to charter a bank and whether the state of Maryland had the power to tax that bank, Marshall had plenty of scope for exercising his preference for a strong national government. Congress did have the power, he ruled, even though the Constitution didn’t spell it out, because Congress was empowered to do whatever was necessary and proper to fulfill its constitutional obligations. Marshall did not interpret the word necessary to mean “absolutely essential,” but rather he took a looser view, holding that Congress had the power to do whatever was “appropriate” to execute its powers. If that meant chartering a bank, then the necessary and proper clause could be stretched to include chartering a bank. Furthermore, Maryland could not tax the federal bank because “the power to tax involves the power to destroy.”¹² If Maryland could tax the federal bank, that would imply it had the power to destroy it, making Maryland supreme over the national government and violating the Constitution’s supremacy clause, which makes the national government supreme.

McCulloch v. Maryland the Supreme Court ruling (1819) confirming the supremacy of national over state government

Marshall continued this theme in Gibbons v. Ogden in 1824.¹³ In deciding that New York did not have the right to create a steamboat monopoly on the Hudson River, Marshall focused on the part of Article I, Section 8, that allows Congress to regulate commerce “among the several states.” He interpreted commerce very broadly to include almost any kind of business, creating a justification for a national government that could freely regulate business and that was dominant over the states.

Gibbons v. Ogden the Supreme Court ruling (1824) establishing national authority over interstate business

Gibbons v. Ogden did not immediately establish national authority over business. Business interests were far too strong to meekly accept government authority, and subsequent Court decisions recognized that strength and a prevailing public philosophy of laissez-faire. The national government’s power in general was limited by cases such as Cooley v. Board of Wardens of Port of Philadelphia (1851),¹⁴ which gave the states greater power to regulate commerce if local interests outweigh national interests, and Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857),¹⁵ which held that Congress did not have the power to outlaw slavery in the territories.