Mark F. One of the most important branches of commerce during the American colonial period was the Indian trade. Search of opportunities for barter was a powerful motive in French and British exploration, and the trader was the principal Caucasian emissary with whom the primitive Indian came in contact.
After the settlement of South Carolina, Charleston became an important center of the southern trade, a position later shared with Savannah. From these points English traders penetrated to the country of the Cherokees and Creeks and later to that of the Choctaws and Chickasaws, where they successfully competed with the French and Spanish.
After the treaty of Paris in eliminated the latter competition, the English so skillfully cultivated the friendship of the Indian tribes through their trading operations that practically all of these became British partisans in the later revolutionary struggle. The bitter animosity which this stand of the Indians aroused among the Americans greatly contributed to the final downfall of the tribes after the winning of American independence. Boyd, Mark F. When the Bank's Baltimore branch refused to pay the tax, Maryland sued James McCulloch, cashier of the branch, for collection of the debt.
McCulloch responded that the tax was unconstitutional. A state court ruled for Maryland, and the court of appeals affirmed.
McCulloch appealed to the U. Supreme Court, which reviewed the case in In a unanimous opinion written by Chief Justice Marshall, the Court ruled that the Bank of the United States was constitutional and that the Maryland tax was unconstitutional. Concerning the power of Congress to charter a bank, the Court turned to the Necessary and Proper Clause of Article I, Section 8, which expressly grants Congress the power to pass laws "necessary and proper" for the execution of its "enumerated powers.
Said the Court famously, "let the ends be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adopted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional. Second, the Court ruled that Maryland lacked the power to tax the Bank because, pursuant to the Supremacy Clause of Article VI of the Constitution, the laws of the United States trump conflicting state laws.
As Marshall put it, "the government of the Union, though limited in its powers, is supreme within its sphere of action, and its laws, when made in pursuance of the constitution, form the supreme law of the land.
Finally, the Court held that the "sovereignty" political authority of the Union lies with the people of the United States, not with the individual states that comprise it.
The United States, not a simple alliance of states, is a nation of "constitutional sovereignty" with its authority resting exclusively with "the people" who created and are governed by the Constitution. To the Court, "the government of the Union is a government of the people; it emanates from them; its powers are granted by them; and are to be exercised directly on them, and for their benefit. If Marbury v.
Madison "promised" that the Supreme Court would exercise great authority in shaping the laws of the land, McCulloch v. Maryland fulfilled that promise for the first time.
0コメント