Search Results

Gibbons v Ogden remains the Supreme Court’s foundational Commerce Clause decision. The chapter provides a summary of the complex set of historical circumstances that led to the Court’s invalidation of the New York steamboat monopoly. The chapter considers Marshall’s discussion of the affirmative commerce power, the dormant commerce power as well as federal pre-emption. It also examines the inherent ambiguity in the opinion and its possible causes. In addition, the chapter considers the extent to which the Gibbons opinion had a positive impact on economic development and how it has significantly influenced commerce clause doctrine ever since.

This chapter examines the propriety of federal laws under the power most often invoked to justify restrictions on liberty: the power to regulate commerce among the several states. Courts are not empowered to disregard powers that are expressly enumerated in the Constitution, even those that violate the rights of the people. They are authorized only to interpret the meaning of these powers, and where this meaning is underdeterminate, to construe them in a manner that is consistent with original meaning and that would render their exercise as legitimate as possible. The chapter analyzes the federal power to regulate commerce by explaining what the Commerce Clause means. It also considers judicial interpretations of commerce during the period 1824–1935 and shows that the term “among the states” independently limits federal power with respect to commerce. Finally, it reviews John Marshall's arguments in Gibbons v. Ogden.

Despite ample opportunity, Chief Justice Marshall did not build on McCulloch v. Maryland to engage in nation-building through his constitutional decisions. In Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), Marshall construed the term “commerce” to include navigation, and struck down a state monopoly over steamboat travel. Gibbons is widely understood as an expansive interpretation of the Commerce Clause that joins McCulloch in establishing the constitutional foundations of broad federal legislative powers. Yet Gibbons made no mention of McCulloch and marked a significant retreat from McCulloch’s conception of implied powers. Indeed, from McCulloch’s issuance in 1819 to the end of Marshall’s life in 1835, the Marshall Court never cited McCulloch’s discussions of constitutional interpretation, nationalist constitutional theory, or implied powers. Marshall’s studied refusal to endorse implied commerce powers is best explained as resulting from his desire to keep the Court out of the two incendiary issues of constitutional politics: internal improvements and slavery.

The U.S. Supreme Court contemplated for the first time the meaning of commerce power as stipulated in the Constitution in the case of Gibbons v. Ogden. The case, first scheduled for consideration in 1821 but delayed until 1824, concerned a New York state law granting Robert Fulton and his associates the exclusive right to operate steamboats in New York waters. However, the Supreme Court never issued a definitive ruling on whether Congress could use its authority over commerce to suppress the domestic slave trade. Chief Justice John Marshall and his colleagues refused to attempt a judicial resolution of the issue, while succeeding justices headed by Roger B. Taney failed to reach a consensus. It was not until the great sectional crisis of the 1850s that the Supreme Court implicitly showed its proslavery side, leading to a national catastrophe.

McCulloch v. Maryland and its principles came under attack during the Jacksonian era, and the Supreme Court under John Marshall’s successor, Roger Taney, ignored McCulloch into oblivion and reversed its thrust. The Taney Court prioritized states’ rights over federal power, to protect the constitutional position of slavery. McCulloch and Gibbons v. Ogden had refrained from committing the Court to implied commerce powers, and Gibbons also invited the Taney Court to ignore McCulloch. To the Jacksonian justices of the Taney Court, preservation of slave-state sovereignty—not the power of Congress to act for the benefit of the whole people—was the bedrock principle of the Constitution. Reserved state powers under the Tenth Amendment were sufficient to block implied federal powers. Moreover, states could regulate matters expressly delegated to the United States when conducive to exercising their reserved powers.

This chapter discusses the development of tourism in the Hudson Valley. According to historian John Sears, there were three prerequisites for the emergence of tourism in nineteenth-century America: the growth of an urban class that had the money and leisure to begin exploring the countryside; the construction of an adequate transportation system; and the development of an infrastructure to provide safe, comfortable accommodations for travelers. In 1823, a group of merchants from Catskill, New York, acquired a seven-acre tract of land known as Pine Orchard and built a “large and commodious hotel” there. After the Supreme Court ruled in Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) that the Livingston monopoly on steamboat navigation on the river was unconstitutional, several new lines were organized. By 1830 there were eight lines operating twenty-nine steamboats on the Hudson, which both increased the efficiency of travel and led to significant decreases in cost. Other developments that promoted tourism include the emergence and public embrace of landscape painting as an appropriate form of American expression in the arts; and the publication of books such as Timothy Dwight's Travels in New England and New York (1822) and guidebooks such as The Tourist (1830). The people who visited Hudson Valley are considered first-generation consumers of the American landscape, both in the sense that building facilities for tourists transformed that landscape, and because many tourists undoubtedly thought of scenery as a commodity to be experienced.