Читать книгу American Democracy in Context - Joseph A. Pika - Страница 110

At issue in McCulloch v. Maryland was whether Congress had the authority to create a national bank. The enumerated powers did not specifically give such authority to Congress. Those who said that Congress had the authority anyway, such as Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the treasury, embraced a broad cooperative federalist interpretation of the elastic clause and argued that creating a national bank was “necessary and proper” (that is, useful or helpful) to carrying out Congress’s enumerated powers. After all, the Constitution specifically gave Congress the power to collect taxes, borrow money, coin money, and regulate the value of money. Surely, he argued, a national bank would facilitate these enumerated powers.²⁰ Dual federalists who believed Congress did not have authority to create a national bank, such as Thomas Jefferson, argued that a national bank was not absolutely necessary or essential for these enumerated powers to be carried out.

Congress embraced Hamilton’s position and created the First Bank of the United States in 1791 and the Second Bank of the United States in 1816. To express its opposition, the state of Maryland then passed legislation to tax all banks operating in the state that were not chartered by the state. James McCulloch, the head of the Baltimore branch of the Second Bank, refused to pay the tax. This led to a lawsuit between McCulloch and Maryland that ended up in the Supreme Court.

The Court confronted two legal questions when deciding McCulloch v. Maryland: Did Congress have the authority to create a national bank? And if so, did the state of Maryland have the authority to tax the Baltimore branch of that bank? The Court unanimously decided that Congress did have the authority to create a national bank. It concluded that creating the bank was a legitimate exercise of Congress’s implied powers. In so doing, the Court embraced Hamilton’s broad, cooperative federalist interpretation of the necessary and proper clause. By assuming that the necessary and proper clause allows Congress to do those things that are appropriate (as opposed to essential) to carrying out its enumerated powers and consistent with the spirit (as well as the letter) of the Constitution, the ruling paved the way for Congress to significantly expand its powers and to do so at the expense of the states.

With regard to the second question, the Court concluded that the state of Maryland could not tax the Baltimore branch of the national bank without violating the supremacy clause. As Marshall stated, “the power to tax involves the power to destroy.”²¹ States “have no power, by taxation or otherwise, to retard, impede, burden or in any manner control the operations of the constitutional laws enacted by Congress.”²² Since Congress has the authority to create a national bank, a state cannot punish that bank, discourage its operation within its borders, or seek to destroy it through taxation. To do so would violate the supremacy of national law.

The Supreme Court’s answers to these legal questions had profound consequences. Its broad interpretation of the necessary and proper clause remains, to this day, an important source of congressional power. In addition, the limit on the power of states to tax the national bank became an important precedent that continues to prevent states from retaliating against or otherwise impeding other entities created by Congress, such as regulatory agencies, that operate within states.