John Marshall and his impact on federalism

In the early years of the eighteenth Century, the young United States of America were slowly adapting to the union and the newly established Constitution. The framers, fearing tyranny, divided powers among state and national governments. At each level, the United States Constitutional further divided up the power among three distinct branch of the government; the legislative, the executive and the judicial branch. Even with the Constitution, issues involving the distribution of power between the national government and state government continued to emerge. In these crucial times, the Judicial Power had problems controlling the other powers. It was a challenge for the Supreme Court to exercise the powers granted by the new Constitution because the judicial power was known back then as the weakest branch. It wasn’t until John Marshall, did the Supreme Court become an effective establishment equal to the two other branches of the government.  

John Marshall was the chief justice of United States from 1801 to 1835. His court opinions helped lay the basis for American constitutional law and made the Supreme Court of United States more powerful. He was an American statesman and jurist who shaped American Constitutional law and developed the American legal system. He reinforced the principal of judicial review and made important decisions relating to federalism. Few Supreme Courts have had a greater impact on the federal-state relationship than the one headed by Chief Justice John Marshall. In a series of decision, he and his associates carved out an important role for the Court in defining the balance of power between the national government and states.

John Marshall first exercised the power of judicial review in the Marbury v Madison case. This landmark decision helped define the boundary between the constitutionally separate executive and judicial branches of the government.  Marbury v Madison is argued as one of the most important Supreme Court cases because it was the first to apply the principal of judicial review. This principal played a key role in making the Supreme Court a separate branch of the government and established its power equal to those of congress and the executive.

In 1819, Mcculloch v. Maryland was another Supreme Court case that helped define the relationship between the national and state governments. The Supreme Court upheld the power of the national government and denied the right of state to tax the federal bank using the Constitution’s supremacy clause. The Court’s broad interpretation of the necessary and proper clauses paved the way for later ruling upholding expansive federal powers. In 1818 the Maryland state legislatures levied a tax from all banks not chartered by Maryland. James McCulloch, head of the Baltimore branch of the bank of the United States refused to pay the tax. Through his case, John Marshall answered two questions: Whether Congress had the power to charter a bank and whether a state could tax that bank. First question was answered using the necessary and proper clause where it can be implied that chartering a bank is considered an enumerated power. The second question was answered using the Supremacy clause. The state tax violated the supremacy clause, because individual states cannot interfere with the operations of national government, whose laws are supreme.

In 1824, The Supreme Court once again paved the way for expansive federal power through its ruling on the Gibbons V Ogden case. The Supreme Court upheld the broad congressional power to regulate interstate commerce though its broad interpretation of the Constitution’s commerce clause. The dispute arose when New York legislatures granted Robert Fulton a monopoly to operate steamboats on the Hudson River, and at the same time, Congress licensed another ship to sail on the same waters. The question addressed by the Supreme Court was: Did congress have the right to regulate commercial activity?  The Supreme Court Addressed that New York had no constitutional authority to grant a monopoly to a single steamboat operator because this action interfered with interstate commerce. Furthermore, in 1833, The Supreme Court addressed the issue of whether the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment applied to actions of the States. The Court ruled that the due process clause did not apply to the actions of the states because the enumerated rights contained in the Bill of Rights were not a limit on states. The states were free to add to those rights or ignore them all together.

These are just some of many rulings by John Marshall which played a major role in defining the nature of the federal system and the distribution of power between the national and state governments.