The United States Supreme Court was created by the Judiciary Act of 1789, in conformity with Article III of the Constitution. As the highest tribunal in the nation, the Court’s decisions on various issues of law have shaped American life and concepts of justice throughout the history of the United States. During its first 70 years, the Supreme Court ruled on dozens of landmark cases with far-reaching consequences for American society. The driving force behind what became known as “judicial nationalism” was none other than Chief Justice John Marshall. Marshall used his Federalist political leanings and penetrating jurisprudence to elevate his court to first among equals with respect to other branches of government, and he used the Court effectively to scale back state influence in matters of national importance. In his 34-year tenure as the head of the highest court in the land, Marshall oversaw several landmark decisions. These indelibly altered the judicial and political landscape of the nation, setting the conditions for robust economic growth and increased centralized authority.
During its first years, the Court considered several cases in which it clarified the constitutional roles of the states, the federal government, and the three branches of government. In Chisholm v. Georgia (1793) the Court ruled that federal judicial power could, among other things, extend to controversies between two or more states. This decision was later overturned by the passage of the Eleventh Amendment (1798), which declared that the judicial power of the United States would not extend to cases in which a person in one state files a suit in equity law against another state. Marbury v. Madison (1803) concerned the validity of a judicial appointment. In this case, Chief Justice John Marshall first introduced the concept of “judicial review,” or the power of the Supreme Court to determine the constitutionality of a law or statute passed by Congress. Although judicial review was not mentioned in Article III of the Constitution as a power of the Supreme Court, Marshall and his associate justices ruled that the Court did possess this power. This seminal decision instituted a powerful and specific role for the judiciary branch, and Americans ever since have assumed the principles in the case: that in a conflict between the Constitution and a federal or state law, the Constitution is paramount, and that it is the Supreme Court’s ultimate responsibility to interpret American laws. In Marshall’s hands, the select application of judicial authority reaffirmed the superiority of the federal government and its prerogatives over the states, granting it a degree of centrality that would have been otherwise unthinkable in the hands of the Jeffersonian Republicans. It can be argued that Marshall achieved judicially what Alexander Hamilton had failed to accomplish through political ends in the 1790s.
In Fletcher v. Peck (1810) the Court ruled that a contract in which Indian lands were sold to Georgia speculators was valid, even though the land sale was later revoked by the Georgia legislature because of fraud and bribery in the original transaction. This decision invalidated the state law, upholding a contract despite the shady circumstances of the agreement. In other words, the Court held that the Constitution does not permit state legislatures to pass laws voiding contracts made by previous legislatures. After Fletcher, there were many other key cases decided on issues of contract and land titles. This was a primary concern in the early republic, because contracts concerning property affected the ability of Americans to purchase frontier lands. In Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee (1816), another case concerning land title, the Court ruled that state courts must obey the Constitution, reaffirming the supremacy of the Supreme Court and the uniformity of federal law from state to state. In Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819), the Court ruled that Dartmouth’s private corporate charter was protected from any state law that aimed to change the nature and purpose of the original contract. Here again, the Court sided with the individual right to contract over the state’s legislative power. The same year, in Mcculloch v. Maryland, the Court decided that the Bank of the United States was not subject to state taxation, and that a bank legitimately established by Congress should be regulated and taxed by Congress. Again, the Court addressed the relationship between the rights of states, individuals, and the federal government. Marshall, in this instance, grafted the concept of implied powers to constitutional law, ruling that whenever federal and state powers were at cross-purposes, federal power invariably exercised ultimate authority. McCulloch v. Maryland thus constitutes the latest and possibly best example of the chief justice’s nationalist stance to addressing issues that pertained to federalism.
The Court also decided several commerce cases in this period. In Cohens v. Virginia (1821), a case concerning the sale of lottery tickets in a state where lotteries were illegal, the justices reaffirmed the judicial supremacy of the Supreme Court over state laws. In Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), the Court ruled that a New York law prohibiting vessels licensed by the U. S. from navigating in state waters was unconstitutional. These vessels were commercial and conducted trade with vessels from other states; therefore the New York law was void. This decision reaffirmed that Congress alone had the power to regulate all aspects of interstate commerce, and states only had the power to regulate commerce that was entirely internal. These two cases exemplify Marshall’s judicial nationalism regarding the institution of a common market throughout the United States. His strident defense of contractual property rights established the Supreme Court as an invaluable ally for both corporate enterprise and capitalist development at the national level.
In the Charles River Bridge case (1837) the Court reconsidered the purposes of contract. Marshall’s recently appointed successor as chief justice, Roger B. Taney, ruled that the Constitution was primarily responsible for fostering “the happiness and prosperity of the community,” not simply protecting the right to property. The proprietors of the Charles River Bridge sought to enjoin the Warren Bridge Company from constructing a bridge that would compete with their own. The Charles River Bridge proprietors argued that their exclusive contract for bridge transport prevented Warren from erecting a competing bridge. Taney ruled in favor of Warren, arguing that in a prosperous young nation, exclusive contracts dampened competition and slowed down the economic expansion of the nation. This decision implied that the interests of developers building new roads and other improvements would take precedence over established companies with exclusive contracts. The case had far-reaching consequences, since it connected “happiness and prosperity” with the right of capitalists to develop new structures and industries. While friendly toward capitalism overall, the Taney Court backed off somewhat from its predecessor’s nationalist tenor and granted states, through the doctrine of concurrent powers, the ability to regulate economic matters where federal legislation was clearly lacking.
Several significant cases throughout this period also bore a strong racial component and were indicative of mounting sectional strife. With the passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and the increasing conflict over Indian lands came cases concerning the sovereignty of Indian nations and the powers of states to pass laws affecting those nations. In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831), the Court decided that it did not have jurisdiction to rule on a case where a state enforced its laws upon the Cherokee. This decision seemed to contradict the previous efforts of the Court to assert its supremacy. In Worcester v. Georgia (1832), another Cherokee case concerning state powers and tribal sovereignty, the Court ruled that Indian tribes were “dependent domestic nations.” As such, they retained rights to any lands they had not voluntarily ceded to the United States. Marshall’s ruling in this case did not prevent the administration of President Andrew Jackson from forcing eastern nations to isolated reservations in the West. “Marshall has made his decision,” Jackson declared; “now let him enforce it!” Clearly, the Court’s authority would be sacrificed to popular opinion in the case of Native American removal.
The relationship between nonwhite peoples and American law would arise again with the Amistad incident (1841) and the first Supreme Court case that dealt with the issue of slavery. Ostensibly an issue of international law, the fate of the Africans who mutinied on the Amistad became a high-profile public referendum on slavery. Justice Joseph Story in his majority opinion upheld a lower-court ruling that the Africans had been kidnapped and thus were not the legitimate property of the Spanish traders who had captured them. The Court ordered the Africans returned to their own land. Notably, the justification for this ruling was not that slavery was unlawful but that the Amistad Africans were not lawfully slaves. The Taney Court also demonstrated a proslavery slant through its ruling in Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842), which struck down a state law enacted to prevent the kidnapping or re-enslavement of escaped slaves. The Court insisted that any state legislation interfering with the return of fugitive slaves was null and void, even if invoked for the protection of free blacks. The Court reaffirmed its proslavery leanings in Jones v. Van Zandt (1847), whereby it sustained the Federal Fugitive Slave Law, defended the right of property in man, and characterized slavery as a “sacred component” upon which the Constitution and the Union arose.
The Taney Court’s position on the legality of slavery became clearer in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857). Scott, a slave, was transported to northern (free) territory by his owner, John Sandford. Scott believed that by entering free territory, he had been freed. When he and Sandford returned to St. Louis, he sued for his freedom. At issue in the case was whether slaves were citizens of the United States with the right to sue in court. In this case, the Court emphasized the rights of the owner, Sandford, over the rights of his black slave. Slaves were property, not citizens, and thus could not use the courts for redress. As Taney famously remarked in his opinion, black people had no rights that white people were bound to respect. Freeing Scott would violate Sandford’s Fifth Amendment right to due process. In this case, unlike Charles River Bridge, Taney upheld the rights to property. Taney added that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in the territories, which rendered the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional. This controversial decision infuriated abolitionists and was one of the main factors contributing to the outbreak of the Civil War four years later.
Throughout the history of the United States, the Supreme Court has been a visible and powerful mediator between the federal and state governments and between the three branches of the federal government. Like any other institution, the Court has reflected the priorities and anxieties of the nation. During the first half of the 19th century, the Court often took a conservative position on matters of individual liberties while adopting a more liberal stance on economic matters like contracts and property rights. As the Dred Scott case shows, Supreme Court decisions often reflected the self-interest of the judges in establishing the supremacy of the Court. Many of the cases described also demonstrate the Court’s unwillingness to apply judicial powers to what they saw as legislative responsibilities.
The Supreme Court made indelible contributions to national growth in the antebellum period by asserting its own constitutional authority, expanding central authority overall, and clearly defining the heretofore muddled relationship between state and federal authority.
Further reading: David N. Atkinson, Leaving the Bench: Supreme Court Justices at the End (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999); Richard E. Ellis, Aggressive Nationalism: McCulloch v. Maryland and the Foundation of Federal Authority in the Young Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Kermit Hall, The Pursuit of Justice: Supreme Court Decisions That Shaped America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); Maureen Harrison, and Steve Gilbert, eds., Civil Rights Decisions of the United States Supreme Court: The 19th Century (San Diego, Calif.: Excellent Books, 1994); Peter Irons, A People’s History of the Supreme Court: The Men and Women Whose Cases and Decisions Have Shaped Our Constitution (New York: Viking, 1999); Bernard Schwartz, A History of the Supreme Court (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History (Boston: Little, Brown, 1926).
—Eleanor H. McConnell
Sutter, John (1 803-1 880) landowner in the California gold rush
Intimately associated with the discovery of gold in California in 1848 and the European colonization of the Sacramento River Valley, John Sutter was also a victim of the California gold rush. He was born Johann Augustus Sutter near Basel, Switzerland (the German-speaking part of trilingual nation), in 1803. After elementary, schooling, he married and became a dry-goods merchant, but both ventures failed. To escape the prospect of debtor’s prison, Sutter abandoned his wife and traveled to America. On the frontier of settlement in Missouri, he gave himself the military title of captain and engaged in trade over the Santa Fe Trail. His ventures failed here as well, and he traveled overland to Oregon and then to Hawaii before arriving in California in 1839.
That year Sutter petitioned the Mexican governor, Juan Bautista Alvarado, for a grant of land. Alvorado gave him 11 square leagues (nearly 50,000 acres) in the Sacramento River Valley and also authorized him to serve as a local justice and law officer. With his large landholdings and official status, Sutter was soon the most important Euro-American in central California. As the command post of his new empire, which he named New Helvetia, Sutter built a fort on the site of the present city of Sacramento. He soon made his fort the center of a series of economic enterprises that included agriculture, grazing, trapping, and the fur trade. He traded extensively and supplied the trappers who had visited the region for a decade before his arrival. This expansive enterprise was created in substantial part through the use of Indian labor. Native Americans worked his fields under conditions that varied from debt peonage to slavery. He also recruited an Indian army,
John Sutter (Library of Congress)
Which he armed and used to enforce order and his own style of justice in the interior of California.
Sutter also befriended arriving American immigrants, and his warm welcome at Fort Sutter symbolized the end of the California Trail. Some of the immigrant families settled on his lands; others were employed in his various economic enterprises. As the largest economic force in central California, he assisted the immigrants while enriching himself at the same time. Sutter held a commission and lands from the republic of Mexico, but he distrusted Mexicans and favored the Americans. With the outbreak of the Mexican-American War in 1846, he openly sided with the Americans, and he was enthusiastic about the prospect of an American victory and California’s annexation to the United States.
As part of the expansion of his many enterprises, Sutter employed a carpenter, James W. Marshall, to build a sawmill on the American River. It was in the race of the mill that Marshall discovered gold on January 24, 1848. Marshall shared his news with his employer, but Sutter (like so many others) did not sense the immense implications of the discovery, and he asked Marshall to keep the news quiet so that the mill could be completed. However, the news began to circulate through the interior valleys and then to San Francisco, and soon the California gold rush was under way. From within California, from Monterey and San Francisco, from Oregon and the Hawaiian Islands, from the East Coast, from Chile and Peru, and eventually from all over the world, men and women by the tens and eventually hundreds of thousands swarmed over the watercourses of central California. By far the largest numbers were the Americans from the East Coast. Several thousand came by sea in the late 1848 and the first half of 1849, but they began flooding into California in the summer of 1849. Sutter’s New Helvetia was at the center of this uncontrollable rush. His workers, including the Indians, deserted him for the gold that seemed to lie everywhere. Prospective miners invaded his property, destroyed his crops, stole his livestock, and took the gold from his lands as their own. Sutter could not stop them; no individual could, and eventually the federal government simply threw up its hands and let the gold rush proceed.
The California gold rush ruined Sutter. Although by proximity he was the individual best placed to profit from it, his vantage point was too close. When he tried to hold on to part of his claim, he found himself without the abundance of paper records that the American land commissioners demanded. By 1852, the great empire of New Helvetia was in ruins. In 1865, Sutter abandoned any attempt to claim part of his grant, and he moved to Pennsylvania, bankrupt. For the rest of his life, he petitioned the federal government on an annual basis for compensation. He asked for damages for the losses he suffered during the Mexican-American War and for the losses that he sustained during the gold rush. He was never successful. In a final blow to his prospects, the Supreme Court denied his land claims in the Sacramento River Valley.
Further reading: Richard Dillon, Fool's Gold: The Decline and Fall of Captain John Sutter of California (New York: Coward-McCann, 1967); Albert L. Hurtado, John Sutter: A Life on the North American Frontier (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006).
World History
