“Has Congress Power to Incorporate a Bank?”

Abstract

Chief Justice Marshall’s ambiguous opinion in McCulloch v. Maryland rejected the hard-line Jeffersonian argument that implied powers were only those strictly necessary to implementing the enumerated powers. But while McCulloch’s logic of implied powers held hugely expansive potential for national legislative authority, Marshall did not follow that logic to its conclusion and stopped short of aggressively nationalistic grounds for upholding the Second Bank of the United States. The Bank’s lawyers argued for placing the constitutionality of the Bank on broad terms that would endorse a theory of implied powers untethered to the enumerated powers. They also offered a less aggressive but still highly nationalistic theory of implied commerce powers that would support internal improvements. Marshall’s studied avoidance of the Commerce Clause was almost certainly intended to avoid committing the Court to a concept of implied commerce powers, which might have entailed federal powers over internal improvements and slavery.