Gibbons v. Ogden

About the Author

John Marshall was born near Germantown, in the “northern neck” region of western Virginia, on September 24, 1755. Marshall was the eldest of fifteen children in a family of minor frontier gentry. His mother, Mary Randolph Keith, was a cousin of Thomas Jefferson's. As a member of a landholding family, Marshall learned to function in the informal political world of the frontier. In 1775 Marshall volunteered for service in the Continental army and served with distinction in several battles before surviving a brutal winter at Valley Forge. The challenges of holding the army together and negotiating with squabbling state officials for precious resources fueled Marshall's beliefs in a strong federal union and an effective central government. In 1780 Marshall briefly studied law at the College of William and Mary before returning to the army in 1781.

In 1783, at the close of the American Revolution, Marshall married Mary Willis Ambler and pursued a career as an attorney in Richmond, Virginia. Marshall's charisma and sharp legal mind helped him secure positions in the Virginia House of Delegates and in the governor's Council of State. Marshall became a staunch Federalist and enthusiastic supporter of his former military comrades George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. In 1788 Marshall served as a delegate to the Virginia ratifying convention, where he strongly urged the adoption of the U.S. Constitution. Following the creation of the fledgling federal government, Marshall turned down offers to serve as Washington's attorney general, as ambassador to France, and as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1797 President John Adams appointed Marshall, Charles Pinckney, and Elbridge Gerry to serve as delegates on a diplomatic mission to France. Rejecting demands from French officials for hefty bribes in what became known as the XYZ Affair, Marshall returned to the United States to a hero's welcome. In 1798 he successfully ran for Congress, where he became a key defender of Adams's moderate brand of federalism. Two years later Marshall began a brief stint as secretary of state. In the aftermath of Adams's defeat to Thomas Jefferson in the presidential election of 1800, the incumbent president hastily nominated Marshall to serve as chief justice of the United States.

Marshall would become the longest-serving chief justice in American history, dominating the Supreme Court until his death in 1835. With the assistance of colleagues such as Joseph Story and Bushrod Washington, Marshall handed down a series of landmark decisions that upheld federal power and established the reputation of the federal judiciary as a truly coequal branch of government. In Fletcher v. Peck (1810), Marshall asserted that the Georgia state legislature had to recognize the validity of land claims by out-of-state speculators, even though the sale of such land involved the wholesale bribery of state legislators. Furthermore, in Martin v. Hunter's Lessee (1816) Marshall recognized British land claims that had been confiscated by Virginia officials during the American Revolution. In Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819) the chief justice upheld Dartmouth's state charter as a contract that could not be changed by the New Hampshire legislature.

Although Marshall strove to deliver unanimous court opinions whenever possible, he often clashed with the associate justice William Johnson over points of law. Born in South Carolina in 1771, Johnson sprang from working-class roots. He attended Princeton, became an attorney, and served three terms as a Republican congressman, briefly serving as Speaker of the House of Representatives. In 1802 President Thomas Jefferson appointed Johnson to the Supreme Court, primarily to counterbalance the nationalist tendencies of John Marshall. Johnson, however, proved to be an independent figure, defying both Marshall and Jefferson on several occasions. For example, in Gibbons v. Ogden, Johnson issued a concurring opinion that argued that the commerce clause of the Constitution, the ultimate authority behind Gibbons's coasting license, invalidated the New York monopoly on its face.