Justice Joseph Story (unanimous): “Is the President the sole and exclusive judge whether the exigency has arisen, or is it to be considered as an open question, upon which every officer to whom the orders of the President are addressed, may decide for himself, and equally open to be contested by every militia-man who shall refuse to obey the orders of the President? We are all of opinion, that the authority to decide whether the exigency has arisen, belongs exclusively to the President, and that his decision is conclusive upon all other persons. We think that this construction necessarily results from the nature of the power itself, and from the manifest object contemplated by the act of Congress.”
In what decision did the Marshall Court rule that a state can release debtors from prison?
The Marshall Court ruled in Mason v. Haile (1827) that the state of Rhode Island constitutionally could prohibit debtors from being imprisoned without violating the U.S. Constitution. Writing for the majority of the Court, Justice Smith Thompson reasoned that “we are not aware that such a power in the States has ever been questioned.” He stated that release debtors do “not take away the entire remedy, but only so far as imprisonment forms a part of such remedy.”
Justice Bushrod Washington filed the Court’s lone dissent. He believed the case was controlled by Sturges v. Crowninshield (1819) in which the Court ruled that a state could not relieve a debtor from bankruptcy if the original contract was made before the passage of the bankruptcy law. “If the principle which governs the two cases can be reconciled with each other, the course of reasoning by which it is to be effected is quite too subtle for my mind to comprehend it,” Washington wrote frankly.
In what decision did the Marshall Court reject a federal common-law claim of seditious libel?
The Marshall Court ruled in United States v. Hudson and Goodwin (1812) that the federal courts cannot exercise jurisdiction in a common-law criminal seditious libel case. The case arose after the federal government charged Barzillai Hudson and George Goodwin for publishing in the Connecticut Currant that the president and the U.S. Congress gave French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte $2 million to make a treaty with Spain. Justice William Johnson wrote that “the legislative authority of the Union must first make an act a crime, affix a punishment for it, and declare the Court that shall have jurisdiction of the offence.”
President Andrew Jackson, above, disagreed with the Marshall Court’s ruling in Worcester v. Georgia, which favored the Cherokee Nation. Jackson eventually instituted a policy that forced the Cherokee to leave their land and move west in what became known as the “Trail of Tears.” Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
What Marshall Court decision did President Andrew Jackson openly defy?
The Marshall Court ruled 5–1 in Worcester v. Georgia (1831) that the state of Georgia could not punish Samuel Worcester, a congregational minister, for living on Cherokee lands. The state of Georgia had passed a law requiring any white person to secure a license before living on Cherokee land. The Court ruled that this law violated the sovereign authority of the Cherokee nation.
President Andrew Jackson reportedly said: “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.” Jackson instituted a policy of uprooting the Cherokee and forcing them west to a reservation. This travel was called the “Trail of Tears.”
What was the only major constitutional decision in which Chief Justice Marshall was on the dissenting side?
The only major decision that Chief Justice Marshall found himself in dissent was the Court’s 1827 in Ogden v. Saunders. The Court was asked to decide whether a state bankruptcy law violated the Contract Clause for contracts that were entered after the passage of the law. The Court ruled 4–3 that state bankruptcy laws were constitutional as applied to contracts passed after the legislation. The case involved George Ogden, a New Yorker, who sought to discharge his debt to John Saunders of Kentucky. The majority of four believed that a state had the power to pass a bankruptcy law and that such a law did not violate the Contract Clause for contracts passed after the bankruptcy law. All four justices in the majority wrote separate opinions.
CourtSpeak: Worcester v. Georgia Cherokee Sovereign Authority Case (1831)
Chief Justice John Marshall (majority): “The Cherokee Nation, then, is a distinct community, occupying its own territory, with boundaries accurately described, in which the laws of Georgia can have no force, and which the citizens of Georgia have no right to enter but with the assent of the Cherokees themselves or in conformity with treaties and with the acts of Congress. The whole intercourse between the United States and this nation is, by our Constitution and laws, vested in the government of the United States.”
In what decision did the Marshall Court refuse to apply the Fifth Amendment protection of just compensation to the states?
The Marshall Court ruled in Barron v. Baltimore (1833) that the Fifth Amendment only protected individuals from the federal government, not state and local governments. The case arose after John Barron claimed that excavating by the city had destroyed his family’s wharf. Barron sued in state court, claiming that the city should pay him for the damage. He argued that he was protected by the Fifth Amendment Clause, which provides that “private property [shall not] be taken, without just compensation.” A jury awarded him $4,500 but the state supreme court reversed.
Barron appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where Chief Justice Marshall ruled that the Fifth Amendment did not extend to the states. He wrote that if the Founders had wanted the Bill of Rights to extend to the states, “they would have declared this purpose in plain and intelligible language.” The Fifth Amendment right to just compensation, like the vast majority of other provisions in the Bill of Rights, was eventually extended to apply to the states by the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 and a series of later U.S. Supreme Court decisions. The Fourteenth Amendment contains the Due Process Clause, which provides that “no state shall deny any person life, liberty or property without due process of law.” Thus, Barron would have a Fifth Amendment claim today but he did not in 1833 when there was no Fourteenth Amendment.
Who was the attorney for the city of Baltimore?
Roger B. Taney represented the city of Baltimore in the Barron case. A few years later, Taney would succeed Marshall as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
CourtSpeak: Ogden v. Saunders Contract Clause and Bankruptcy Case (1827)
Justice Bushrod Washington (majority): “It is thus most apparent, that, which ever way we turn, whether to laws affecting the validity, construction, or discharges of contracts, or the evidence or remedy to be employed in enforcing them, we are met by this overruling and admitted distinction, between those which operate retrospectively, and those which operate prospectively. In all of them, the law is pronounced to be void in the first class of cases, and not so in the second.”
Justice William Johnson (majority): “The right, then, of the creditor, to the aid of the public arm for the recovery of contracts, is not absolute and unlimited, but may be modified by the necessities or policy of societies. And this, together with the contract itself, must be taken by the individual, subject to such restrictions and conditions as are imposed by the laws of the country. The right to pass bankrupt laws is asserted by every civilized nation in the world.”
Justice Smith Thompson (majority): “It is admitted, and has so been decided by this Court, that a State law, discharging insolvent debtors from their contracts, entered into antecedent to the passing of the law, falls within this clause in the constitution, and is void. In the case now before the Court, the contract was made subsequent to the passage of the law; and this, it is believed, forms a solid ground of distinction, whether tested by the letter, or the spirit and policy of the prohibition.