McCulloch v. Maryland

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McCULLOCH V. MARYLAND

U.S. Supreme Court chief justice John Marshall's opinion in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) ranks, along with his opinion in Marbury v. Madison (1803), as one of his two most important opinions. It is the most important and persuasive assertion of the supremacy of the Constitution and Congress in the period before the Civil War. The case involved the constitutionality of the federal legislation creating the Second Bank of the United States. Marshall wrote an opinion that resembles a state paper or an essay on constitutional and political theory. It is a magisterial essay on the powers of the national government and the meaning of the Constitution. In it he upheld the constitutionality of the bank.

In 1791 Congress had given the Bank of the United States a twenty-year charter over the objections of Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and U.S. Representative James Madison. The charter expired in 1811, when Madison was president and his allies firmly in control of Congress and just as firmly opposed to the bank. Thus, the first Bank of the United States ceased to exist. However, the War of 1812 (1812–1815) forced Madison and his party to rethink their position. Without a central bank it was difficult for the government to function, especially in a time of crisis. Thus, in 1816 Congress chartered a new bank and Madison happily signed the legislation creating the Second Bank of the United States. The bank was initially popular, but public support diminished as a growing financial crisis led to the Panic of 1819. In 1818 Maryland passed a law to tax notes of all banks "not chartered by the legislature." The only bank that fit this description was the Baltimore branch of the Bank of the United States. James W. McCulloch, the head of the Baltimore branch, refused to pay the tax and was subsequently sued by the state. He appealed his conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Arguments in the case lasted nine days as Daniel Webster, Attorney General William Wirt, and William Pinkney, one of the most prominent lawyers in the nation, defended the bank's interests. Maryland's legal team was led by Luther Martin, who had been a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1787.

Marshall, speaking for a unanimous Court, based his opinion on the "necessary and proper" clause of the U.S. Constitution. He established that the bank was necessary for the smooth operation of the national government. He showed that it was proper for the government to control its finances and have a place to deposit tax revenues. He demonstrated that nothing in the Constitution prohibited Congress from establishing a bank. Thus, he concluded: "Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional." He noted that the Tenth Amendment declared that the "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution" were reserved to the states or the people. But he pointed out that the amendment, unlike the language in the Articles of Confederation, did not use the term "expressly delegated." He rejected the idea that the Constitution was like a legal code, spelling out all the powers of Congress. Such a document "could scarcely be embraced by the human mind." He reminded readers they must "never forget that it is a constitution we are expounding," and that it was "a constitution intended to endure for ages to come." Thus, it had to be "adapted to the various crises of human affairs." This flexible approach to the Constitution allowed Congress to pass all laws and create all institutions that were necessary and proper for implementing the functions of government, as long as the Constitution did not specifically prohibit such actions.

He then turned to Maryland's attempt to tax the bank. He noted that the "power to tax involves the power to destroy," and that if Maryland could tax the bank created by Congress, it could destroy that bank. But no state could destroy what Congress legally and constitutionally created, because "the great principle" of the American nation was "that the constitution and the laws made in pursuance thereof are supreme." If Maryland could tax the bank, it could tax the customhouse, the mails, military installations, and in effect destroy the national government. "This," Marshall was certain, "was not intended by the American people."

Marshall's opinion deeply angered states' rights advocates, especially those in Virginia who feared a strong national government. Judge Spencer Roane, Judge William Brockenbrough, and former U.S. senator John Taylor (known as John Taylor of Caroline) attacked the decision in Virginia's newspapers. Marshall replied to these attacks on his opinion, first under the nom de plume "A Friend of the Union," but the Philadelphia paper that published these essays gnarled them and left out complete paragraphs. Thus, he republished corrected versions in an Alexandria, Virginia, paper under the name "A Friend of the Constitution." The newspaper debate did not settle the issue, and in 1832 Andrew Jackson would dismantle the bank. But Marshall's opinion endured as the Supreme Court's most powerful and authoritative analysis of the inherent flexibility in the Constitution and the supremacy of both the Constitution and Congress.

See alsoBank of the United States; Marshall, John; Panic of 1819; Presidency, The: James Madison; States' Rights .