Source: The Supreme Court : "One Nation Under Law"
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The Founding Fathers reasoned that in creating a new nation there could be two distinct branches of government with overlapping powers: that of the individual states and that of a federal government. This video presents the evolution of John Marshall’s ideas about the importance of federal authority from his time as a soldier in the Revolutionary War to his tenure as the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Download and ShareJohn Marshall is remembered for the decisions he made while Chief Justice of the United States. In addition to the important case McCulloch v. Maryland, Marshall wrote several other landmark decisions that illustrate the conflict between different branches of government and/or different levels of government.
Marbury v. Madison (1803)John Adams, in the last hours before leaving office, signed over forty commissions, including one to appoint William Marbury as Justice of the Peace for the District of Columbia. The new President and Adams' political enemy, Thomas Jefferson, ordered the Secretary of State, James Madison, not to deliver the commissions. Marbury, who had a rightful claim to the commission, requested that the Supreme Court order Madison to deliver it.
The power by which the Supreme Court could make that order came from the Judiciary Act of 1789. However, despite agreeing with Marbury's claim, Chief Justice John Marshall declared that as the Judiciary Act of 1789 could be interpreted as giving the Supreme Court more power than it was entitled to by the constitution, that act was unconstitutional. This was the first time an act that had been passed by Congress and signed by the President was declared unconstitutional.
Marshall was asserting the right of the Supreme Court to determine the constitutionality of laws. Marbury never got his commission, but through this decision, Chief Justice Marshall established the judicial branch as an equal partner with the executive and legislative branches.
Cohens v. Virginia (1821)The Cohen brothers sold Washington D.C. lottery tickets in Virginia, which was a violation of Virginia state law. They were convicted and fined by a Virginia Court, and upon appeal the Supreme Court found that the Virginia ruling had been a fair one.
But although the Supreme Court's ruling had not changed anything, its import lay in its tone. In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court held that not only was it able to review state criminal proceedings, but that it was required to hear cases that involved constitutional questions. Marshall reasoned that when state laws and constitutions are repugnant to the Constitution and to federal laws, they are “absolutely void.”
Gibbons v. Ogden (1824)Aaron Ogden held a New York state-granted monopoly license to ferry people between New York and New Jersey. Competitors, denied similar licenses by New York, secured one from the U.S. Congress. Thomas Gibbons held one such license.
Ogden argued that trafficking passengers was not commerce, and therefore did not conflict with Congress' regulation of commerce between states. The Supreme Court disagreed, ruling that the concept of commerce included navigation and commercial intercourse generally. This essentially expanded the meaning of commerce and asserted Congress' power over it. In fact, this now extends to almost every kind of movement of persons, things, ideas, and communication, for commercial purposes or not, across state lines.
--adapted from the Web site Landmark Supreme Court Cases
AMAR: America's founders were children of the Enlightenment. They are living in an Age of Reason. They are seeing remarkable discoveries in the natural sciences. And the framers of the Constitution believe that they can discover enduring principles of political science that are every bit as important and powerful as laws of the natural sciences.
POST: It's a man-made reflection, in a sense, of the universe, of how they thought the universe was working. It was how they were thinking about the natural world, in this sort of balanced and opposing forces. And I think it was very natural for, for them to think about the social world in the same way.
NARRATOR: It was a singular experiment, assigning distinct but overlapping powers to two separate sovereignties -- the federal government and the individual states.
In the 20 years since that uncertain balance had been negotiated at the Constitutional Convention, Americans had discovered only one thing for sure: nature might be governed by hard, fast, and immutable laws; government is not.
A deep divide still separated the champions of a strong central government from those who cherished state sovereignty.
GILLMAN: You really had two major views about what the Constitution really stood for, that are really well embodied in Jefferson and in John Marshall. From Jefferson's point of view, the Constitution creates a relatively small national government. Marshall, on the other hand, thought that the Constitution had created a great American republic; that its greatness was in its unity, and in the power of its national government.
NARRATOR: Marshall's belief in a strong union wasn't some glorious abstraction; it came straight from his life ... most especially from his service as a young infantry officer in the Revolutionary War.
For Marshall, the unforgettable lesson of that war began in the days before Christmas 1777, when General George Washington's army retreated into the frozen hills of eastern Pennsylvania.
At Valley Forge, 22-year-old Lieutenant John Marshall counted nearly 4,000 men unfit for duty for want of clothes. "Scarcely one man of these," he later wrote, "had a pair of shoes." George Washington begged the states for provisions, to no avail. The Continental Army was nearly destroyed by the indifference of the states. The Continental Congress was powerless to help.
NEWMYER: The powers of Congress were essentially limited by the fact that the states were sovereign. So they could request that the states supply troops and supplies, but they had no way of enforcing it.
It was pretty much impossible to conduct a war, you know, if you have 13 states doing what they think is in their best interest of the states. And this is the thing which Washington complained about, which Marshall undertook to remedy, I guess you might say, in his political career and, of course, in his career as chief justice.
NARRATOR: John Marshall kept the lessons of war close to heart. The greatest danger to a strong union, as he saw it, would be the state legislatures, which were too likely to be swayed by the people's fleeting and irrational passions.
ROBERTS: Marshall regarded his first government as Congress, not Virginia. And it's because he fought at peril of his life, and bravely, to establish that government. At a time when I think most people would reflexively regard themselves as a citizen of Massachusetts, a citizen of Pennsylvania, a citizen of Virginia, he was first a citizen of the United States. And you see that reflected in the decisions of his Court.
AMAR: John Marshall inherits a Constitution that doesn't have very many "no state shall" clauses. But the ones that it does have he makes the most of. When individual states misbehave, John Marshall's Court slaps them down.
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