Accomplishments Of President John Marshall

John Marshall, the fourth chief of justice to the U.S. Supreme Court, became perhaps the nation’s “most illustrious judicial figure” according to Charles Evans Hughes (Simon, 2012). He was strongly committed to the need to create a strong and effective government. Marshall quickly became a prominent political figure of the Federalist Party in the 1790’s, and in early 1801, he was appointed to the Supreme Court by President John Adams. On assuming his duties, Chief Justice John Marshall took immediate action to strengthen the power of the Court (Fox, 2006). He raised the United States Supreme Court from an anomalous position to majesty and power. He shaped the Constitution by the depth and wisdom of his own interpretation. Likewise, he dominated

Congress, as well as the executive and judicial branches of the government, can only exercise those powers listed in the historical document. Congressional powers are enumerated in several places within the Constitution. The most important of those powers, perhaps, is listed in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution and is often referred to as the Necessary and Proper Clause. The very first power granted to Congress in the Constitution is the power to tax. The last paragraph of Clause 1 also grants Congress with the power “to make all law which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers.” The Necessary and Proper Clause was the subject of a rather heated debated between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. Hamilton argued that the clause should be read broadly so as to exercise a broad range of many implied powers. Conversely, Jefferson argued that “necessary” was actually a restrictive adjective and what it really meant was essential. Hamilton’s interpretation of the Necessary and Proper Clause was more flexible and made for a strong national government, whereas Jefferson’s narrower interpretation would help strengthen States’ Rights. The debate between the Secretary of Treasury and the Secretary of State came to a head in the landmark case, McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) (Linder,

Maryland remains as one of the United States Supreme Court’s most important decisions and was the very first case in which the Court applied the Necessary and Proper Clause. By establishing the doctrine of implied powers, this decision helped eliminate the need for many amendments that attempted to expand congressional powers. It also enhanced the importance of explicit restraints on congressional powers such as those found in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights (McCulloch v. Maryland, 2014). The case of McCulloch v. Maryland presented the Court with two questions: Did Congress have the authority to incorporate a bank, and was it constitutional to impose a state tax upon such a bank? The answer to the first question, according to Chief Justice Marshall, was yes and to the second was no. It was one of the important opinions he gave over his long career. Nothing explicit was stated in the Constitution about establishing banks, nor did Congress have the power to grant charters of incorporation. Therefore such authority could only be supposed by the reasoning of the Tenth Amendment, and Maryland would have seemed within its right to legislate a state tax upon the bank. John Marshall, however, bypassed the objections with his interpretation of the Necessary and Proper Clause. In the end, Marshall and the Court were “unanimously of opinion, that the law passed by the legislature of Maryland, imposing a tax on the Bank of The United States, is unconstitutional and