Gibbons v. Ogden

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Gibbons v. Ogden, [22 U.S. 1] (1824), is a case in which the United States Supreme Court ruled that the power to regulate interstate navigation was reserved to Congress by the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.

The case arose from an attempt by the State of New York to grant a monopoly of steamboat operation between New York and neighboring New Jersey. Robert Fulton and Robert Livingston were granted such exclusive rights. They licensed the New Jersey operator Aaron Ogden, formerly a U.S. Senator and Governor of New Jersey, to operate the ferry between New York City and Elizabeth Point in New Jersey. Thomas Gibbons was operating a competing ferry service which had been licensed by a 1793 act of Congress regulating the coasting trade. Ogden obtained an injunction from a New York court against Gibbons to keep him out of New York waters, maintaining that navigation was a distinct form of commerce, and was thus a legitimate area of state regulation. Gibbons then sued for entry into the state, and the case was appealed to The Supreme Court.

The Court found in favor of Gibbons, stating that "The mind can scarcely conceive a system for regulating commerce between nations which shall exclude all laws concerning navigation." The ruling determined that "a Congressional power to regulate navigation is as expressly granted as if that term had been added to the word 'commerce'.

The Court went on to conclude that Congressional power over commerce should extend to the regulation of all aspects of it, overriding state law to the contrary:

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.

The broader interpretation of Congressional power established by Gibbons v. Ogden survived until 1895, when the court began to limit Congressional power in the case of United States v. E. C. Knight Co., 156 U.S. 1 (1895). Although this marked the start of a 40 year period of history during which the commerce clause was limited in scope, during the 1930s and from then until at least the 1990s, the Supreme Court returned to its broad view of the commerce clause originally established in Gibbons.

References

Jean Edward Smith, John Marshall: Definer Of A Nation, New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1996.
Jean Edward Smith, The Constitution And American Foreign Policy, St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Company, 1989.

External link

[Full text of the decision & case resources from Justia & Northwestern-Oyez]

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