In order for the United States to develop interstate and
international commerce, the Constitution gave Congress the power to regulate
trade between states and foreign countries. The extent of Congress’s regulatory
power remained vague until 1824, when the nature of the commerce clause in the
Constitution came into question with the case of Gibbons v. Ogden.
In 1807 Robert Fulton and Robert Livingston acquired a monopoly of steam
navigation in the waters of the state of New York. Fulton and Livingston granted
a license to Aaron Ogden to navigate these waters. A third party, Thomas
Gibbons, held a federal license and began running a competitive line in 1818.
Ogden received a restraining injunction from the state courts, but Gibbons
appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States. Chief Justice John Marshall
found that Gibbons’s federal license nullified Ogden’s grant of a monopoly from
New York state. This broad interpretation of congressional authority
strengthened federalism.
From Gibbons v. Ogden
Mr. Chief Justice Marshall delivered the opinion of the
Court.
As preliminary to the very able discussions of the
Constitution which we have heard from the bar, and as having some influence on
its construction, reference has been made to the political situation of these
States anterior to its formation. It has been said that they were sovereign,
were completely independent, and were connected with each other only by a
league. This is true. But, when these allied sovereigns converted their league
into a government, when they converted their Congress of Ambassadors, deputed to
deliberate on their common concerns and to recommend measures of general
utility, into a Legislature, empowered to enact laws on the most interesting
subjects, the whole character in which the States appear underwent a change, the
extent of which must be determined by a fair consideration of the instrument by
which that change was effected.
This instrument contains an enumeration of powers
expressly granted by the people to their government… We know of no rule for
construing the extent of such powers other than is given by the language of the
instrument which confers them, taken in connection with the purposes for which
they were conferred.
The words are, 'Congress shall have power to regulate
commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian
tribes.'
The subject to be regulated is commerce, and our
Constitution being, as was aptly said at the bar, one of enumeration, and not of
definition, to ascertain the extent of the power, it becomes necessary to settle
the meaning of the word. The counsel for the appellee would limit it to traffic,
to buying and selling, or the interchange of commodities, and do not admit that
it comprehends navigation. This would restrict a general term, applicable to
many objects, to one of its significations. Commerce, undoubtedly, is traffic,
but it is something more: it is intercourse. It describes the commercial
intercourse between nations, and parts of nations, in all its branches, and is
regulated by prescribing rules for carrying on that intercourse. The mind can
scarcely conceive a system for regulating commerce between nations which shall
exclude all laws concerning navigation, which shall be silent on the admission
of the vessels of the one nation into the ports of the other, and be confined to
prescribing rules for the conduct of individuals in the actual employment of
buying and selling or of barter.
If commerce does not include navigation, the government
of the Union has no direct power over that subject, and can make no law
prescribing what shall constitute American vessels or requiring that they shall
be navigated by American seamen. Yet this power has been exercised from the
commencement of the government, has been exercised with the consent of all, and
has been understood by all to be a commercial regulation. All America
understands, and has uniformly understood, the word 'commerce' to comprehend
navigation. It was so understood, and must have been so understood, when the
Constitution was framed. The power over commerce, including navigation, was one
of the primary objects for which the people of America adopted their government,
and must have been contemplated in forming it. The convention must have used the
word in that sense, because all have understood it in that sense, and the
attempt to restrict it comes too late.
The word used in the Constitution, then, comprehends,
and has been always understood to comprehend, navigation within its meaning, and
a power to regulate navigation is as expressly granted as if that term had been
added to the word 'commerce.'
To what commerce does this power extend? The
Constitution informs us, to commerce 'with foreign nations, and among the
several States, and with the Indian tribes.'
It has, we believe, been universally admitted that these
words comprehend every species of commercial intercourse between the United
States and foreign nations. No sort of trade can be carried on between this
country and any other to which this power does not extend. It has been truly
said that 'commerce,' as the word is used in the Constitution, is a unit every
part of which is indicated by the term.
If this be the admitted meaning of the word in its
application to foreign nations, it must carry the same meaning throughout the
sentence, and remain a unit, unless there be some plain intelligible cause which
alters it.
The subject to which the power is next applied is to
commerce 'among the several States.' The word 'among' means intermingled with. A
thing which is among others is intermingled with them. Commerce among the States
cannot stop at the external boundary line of each State, but may be introduced
into the interior.
It is not intended to say that these words comprehend
that commerce which is completely internal, which is carried on between man and
man in a State, or between different parts of the same State, and which does not
extend to or affect other States. Such a power would be inconvenient, and is
certainly unnecessary.
Comprehensive as the word 'among' is, it may very
properly be restricted to that commerce which concerns more States than one. The
phrase is not one which would probably have been selected to indicate the
completely interior traffic of a State, because it is not an apt phrase for that
purpose, and the enumeration of the particular classes of commerce to which the
power was to be extended would not have been made had the intention been to
extend the power to every description. The enumeration presupposes something not
enumerated, and that something, if we regard the language or the subject of the
sentence, must be the exclusively internal commerce of a State. The genius and
character of the whole government seem to be that its action is to be applied to
all the external concerns of the nation, and to those internal concerns which
affect the States generally, but not to those which are completely within a
particular State, which do not affect other States, and with which it is not
necessary to interfere for the purpose of executing some of the general powers
of the government. The completely internal commerce of a State, then, may be
considered as reserved for the State itself.
But, in regulating commerce with foreign nations, the
power of Congress does not stop at the jurisdictional lines of the several
States. It would be a very useless power if it could not pass those lines. The
commerce of the United States with foreign nations is that of the whole United
States. Every district has a right to participate in it. The deep streams which
penetrate our country in every direction pass through the interior of almost
every State in the Union, and furnish the means of exercising this right. If
Congress has the power to regulate it, that power must be exercised whenever the
subject exists. If it exists within the States, if a foreign voyage may commence
or terminate at a port within a State, then the power of Congress may be
exercised within a State.
This principle is, if possible, still more clear, when
applied to commerce 'among the several States.' They either join each other, in
which case they are separated by a mathematical line, or they are remote from
each other, in which case other States lie between them. What is commerce
'among' them, and how is it to be conducted? Can a trading expedition between
two adjoining States, commence and terminate outside of each? And if the trading
intercourse be between two States remote from each other, must it not commence
in one, terminate in the other, and probably pass through a third?
We are now arrived at the inquiry—What is this
power?
It is the power to regulate, that is, to prescribe the
rule by which commerce is to be governed. This power, like all others vested in
Congress, is complete in itself, may be exercised to its utmost extent, and
acknowledges no limitations other than are prescribed in the Constitution. These
are expressed in plain terms, and do not affect the questions which arise in
this case, or which have been discussed at the bar. If, as has always been
understood, the sovereignty of Congress, though limited to specified objects, is
plenary as to those objects, the power over commerce with foreign nations, and
among the several States, is vested in Congress as absolutely as it would be in
a single government, having in its Constitution the same restrictions on the
exercise of the power as are found in the Constitution of the United
States.
But it has been urged with great earnestness that,
although the power of Congress to regulate commerce with foreign nations and
among the several States be coextensive with the subject itself, and have no
other limits than are prescribed in the Constitution, yet the States may
severally exercise the same power, within their respective jurisdictions. In
support of this argument, it is said that they possessed it as an inseparable
attribute of sovereignty, before the formation of the Constitution, and still
retain it except so far as they have surrendered it by that instrument; that
this principle results from the nature of the government, and is secured by the
tenth amendment; that an affirmative grant of power is not exclusive unless in
its own nature it be such that the continued exercise of it by the former
possessor is inconsistent with the grant, and that this is not of that
description.
The appellant, conceding these postulates except the
last, contends that full power to regulate a particular subject implies the
whole power, and leaves no residuum; that a grant of the whole is incompatible
with the existence of a right in another to any part of it.
Both parties have appealed to the Constitution, to
legislative acts, and judicial decisions, and have drawn arguments from all
these sources to support and illustrate the propositions they respectively
maintain.
In our complex system, presenting the rare and difficult
scheme of one General Government whose action extends over the whole but which
possesses only certain enumerated powers, and of numerous State governments
which retain and exercise all powers not delegated to the Union, contests
respecting power must arise. Were it even otherwise, the measures taken by the
respective governments to execute their acknowledged powers would often be of
the same description, and might sometimes interfere. This, however, does not
prove that the one is exercising, or has a right to exercise, the powers of the
other.
It has been contended by the counsel for the appellant
that, as the word 'to regulate' implies in its nature full power over the thing
to be regulated, it excludes necessarily the action of all others that would
perform the same operation on the same thing. That regulation is designed for
the entire result, applying to those parts which remain as they were, as well as
to those which are altered. It produces a uniform whole which is as much
disturbed and deranged by changing what the regulating power designs to leave
untouched as that on which it has operated.
There is great force in this argument, and the Court is
not satisfied that it has been refuted.
Since, however, in exercising the power of regulating
their own purely internal affairs, whether of trading or police, the States may
sometimes enact laws the validity of which depends on their interfering with,
and being contrary to, an act of Congress passed in pursuance of the
Constitution, the Court will enter upon the inquiry whether the laws of New
York, as expounded by the highest tribunal of that State, have, in their
application to this case, come into collision with an act of Congress and
deprived a citizen of a right to which that act entitles him. Should this
collision exist, it will be immaterial whether those laws were passed in virtue
of a concurrent power 'to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the
several States' or in virtue of a power to regulate their domestic trade and
police. In one case and the other, the acts of New York must yield to the law of
Congress, and the decision sustaining the privilege they confer against a right
given by a law of the Union must be erroneous.
This opinion has been frequently expressed in this
Court, and is founded as well on the nature of the government as on the words of
the Constitution. In argument, however, it has been contended that, if a law
passed by a State, in the exercise of its acknowledged sovereignty, comes into
conflict with a law passed by Congress in pursuance of the Constitution, they
affect the subject and each other like equal opposing powers.
But the framers of our Constitution foresaw this state
of things, and provided for it by declaring the supremacy not only of itself,
but of the laws made in pursuance of it. The nullity of any act inconsistent
with the Constitution is produced by the declaration that the Constitution is
the supreme law. The appropriate application of that part of the clause which
confers the same supremacy on laws and treaties is to such acts of the State
Legislatures as do not transcend their powers, but, though enacted in the
execution of acknowledged State powers, interfere with, or are contrary to, the
laws of Congress made in pursuance of the Constitution or some treaty made under
the authority of the United States. In every such case, the act of Congress or
the treaty is supreme, and the law of the State, though enacted in the exercise
of powers not controverted, must yield to it.
In pursuing this inquiry at the bar, it has been said
that the Constitution does not confer the right of intercourse between State and
State. That right derives its source from those laws whose authority is
acknowledged by civilized man throughout the world. This is true. The
Constitution found it an existing right, and gave to Congress the power to
regulate it. In the exercise of this power, Congress has passed 'an act for
enrolling or licensing ships or vessels to be employed in the coasting trade and
fisheries, and for regulating the same.' The counsel for the respondent contend
that this act does not give the right to sail from port to port, but confines
itself to regulating a preexisting right so far only as to confer certain
privileges on enrolled and licensed vessels in its exercise.
It will at once occur that, when a Legislature attaches
certain privileges and exemptions to the exercise of a right over which its
control is absolute, the law must imply a power to exercise the right. The
privileges are gone if the right itself be annihilated. It would be contrary to
all reason, and to the course of human affairs, to say that a State is unable to
strip a vessel of the particular privileges attendant on the exercise of a
right, and yet may annul the right itself; that the State of New York cannot
prevent an enrolled and licensed vessel, proceeding from Elizabethtown, in New
Jersey, to New York, from enjoying, in her course, and on her entrance into
port, all the privileges conferred by the act of Congress, but can shut her up
in her own port, and prohibit altogether her entering the waters and ports of
another State. To the Court, it seems very clear that the whole act on the
subject of the coasting trade, according to those principles which govern the
construction of statutes, implies unequivocally an authority to licensed vessels
to carry on the coasting trade.
But all inquiry into this subject seems to the Court to
be put completely at rest by the act already mentioned, entitled, 'An act for
the enrolling and licensing of steamboats.'
This act authorizes a steamboat employed, or intended to
be employed, only in a river or bay of the United States, owned wholly or in
part by an alien, resident within the United States, to be enrolled and licensed
as if the same belonged to a citizen of the United States.
This act demonstrates the opinion of Congress that
steamboats may be enrolled and licensed, in common with vessels using sails.
They are, of course, entitled to the same privileges, and can no more be
restrained from navigating waters and entering ports which are free to such
vessels than if they were wafted on their voyage by the winds, instead of being
propelled by the agency of fire. The one element may be as legitimately used as
the other for every commercial purpose authorized by the laws of the Union, and
the act of a State inhibiting the use of either to any vessel having a license
under the act of Congress comes, we think, in direct collision with that
act.
As this decides the cause, it is unnecessary to enter in
an examination of that part of the Constitution which empowers Congress to
promote the progress of science and the useful arts.
The Court is aware that, in stating the train of
reasoning by which we have been conducted to this result, much time has been
consumed in the attempt to demonstrate propositions which may have been thought
axioms. It is felt that the tediousness inseparable from the endeavour to prove
that which is already clear is imputable to a considerable part of this opinion.
But it was unavoidable. The conclusion to which we have come depends on a chain
of principles which it was necessary to preserve unbroken, and although some of
them were thought nearly self-evident, the magnitude of the question, the weight
of character belonging to those from whose judgment we dissent, and the argument
at the bar demanded that we should assume nothing.
Powerful and ingenious minds, taking as postulates that
the powers expressly granted to the government of the Union are to be contracted
by construction into the narrowest possible compass and that the original powers
of the States are retained if any possible construction will retain them may, by
a course of well digested but refined and metaphysical reasoning founded on
these premises, explain away the Constitution of our country and leave it a
magnificent structure indeed to look at, but totally unfit for use. They may so
entangle and perplex the understanding as to obscure principles which were
before thought quite plain, and induce doubts where, if the mind were to pursue
its own course, none would be perceived. In such a case, it is peculiarly
necessary to recur to safe and fundamental principles to sustain those
principles, and when sustained, to make them the tests of the arguments to be
examined.
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