Important Cases of the Marshall Court

1803: Marbury v. Madison

The court ruled that Congress exceeded its power in the Judiciary Act of 1789; thus, the Court established its power to review acts of Congress and declare invalid those it found in conflict with the Constitution, judicial review.

1810: Fletcher v. Peck

Arose when a Georgia legislature, swayed by bribery, granted 35 million acres in the Yazoo River country (Mississippi) to private speculators. The next legislature, yielding to an angry public outcry, canceled the crooked transcation. But the Supreme Court, with Federalist Marshall presiding, decreed that the legislative grant was a contract (even though fraudulently secured) and that the Constitution forbids state laws "impairing contrast" (Art. I, Sec. X, para. 1). The decision is perhaps the most noteworthy as further protecting property rights against popular pressures It was also one of the earliest assertions of the right of the Supreme Court to invalidate state laws conflicting with the federal Constitution.

1819: McCulloch v. Maryland.

The court ruled that Congress had the authority to charter a national bank, under the Constitution's granting of the power to enact all laws "necessary and proper" (elastic clause) to exact the responsibilities of the government. The court also held that the national bank was immune to state taxation.

1819: Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward

This case was perhaps the best remembered of Marshall's decisions. The college had been granted a charter by King George III in 1769 but the democratic New Hampshire state legislature had seen fit to change it. Dartmouth appealed the case, employing as counsel its most distinguished alumnus, Daniel Webster ('01). The "Godlike Daniel" reportedly pulled out all the stops of his tear-inducing eloquence when he declaimed, "It is sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet there are those who love it." Marshall needed no dramatics in the Dartmouth case. He put the states firmly in their place when he ruled that the original charter must stand. It was a contract and the Constitution protected contracts against state encroachments. This decision had the fortunate effect of safeguarding business enterprise from domination by the states. However, it also had the unfortunate effect of creating a precedent that enabled chartered corporations to escape the handcuffs of needed public control in later years.

1828: Cherokee Nation v. Georgia

Although many tribes violently resisted white encroachment, others followed the path of accomodation. The Cherokees of Georgia made especially remarkable efforts to learn the ways of the whites. They gradually abandoned their seminomadic life and adopted a system of settled agriculture and a notion of private property. Missionaries opened schools among the Cherokees and the Indian Sequoyah devised a Cherokee alphabet. In 1808 the Cherokee National Council legislated a written legal code, and in 1827 it adopted a written constitution that provided for executive, legislative and judicial branches of government. Some Cherokees became prosperous cotton planters and even turned to slaveholding. Nearly 1300 blacks toiled for their Native American masters in the Cherokee nation in the 1820s. All this apparently was not good enough for the whites. In 1828 the Georgia legislature declared the Cherokee tribal council illegal and asserted its own jurisdiction over Indian affairs and Idian lands. The Cherokees appealed this move to the Supreme Court which thrice upheld the rights of the Indians. But President Jackson, who clearly wanted to open Indian lands to white settlement, refused to recognize the Court's decisions. In a callous sneer at the Indians' defender, Jackson reportedly snapped, "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it"

1832 Worcester v. Georgia
The Supreme Court held that Cherokee Native Americans had the right to sovereignty despite conflicting Georgia legislature interests and encroachments. 160 years later, in 1992, the state of Georgia formally pardoned the two white missionaries, Samue Austin Worcester and Elihu Butler, who had figured prominently in the decision Jackson condemned. They had been convicted of living on Cherokee lands without a license from the state of Georgia. They served 16 months at hard labor on a chain gang and later accompanied the Cherokees on the "Trail of Tears" to Oklahoma.

1824 Gibbons v. Ogden.
Hard less less significant was this celebrated "steamboat" case. The suit grew out of an attempt by the state of New York to grant to a private concern a monopoly of waterborne commerce between New York and New Jersey. Marshall sternly reminded the upstart state that the Constitution conferred on Congress alone to the control of interstate commerce (Art. I, Sec. VIII, para. 3). He thus struck another blow at states' rights, while upholding the sovereign powers of the federal government. Interstate streams were thus cleared of this judicial snag, while the departed spirit of Hamilton may have applauded.