Facts
○
The Court struck down NY’s attempt to grant a
steamboat monopoly to Robert Fulton (ultimately franchised to Ogden). Ogden claimed that river
traffic was not “commerce” under the Commerce Clause (commerce is about buying and selling stuff) and further argued that Congress could not interfere w/ NY’s grant of an exclusive monopoly within its own borders.
○
Ogden’s assertion: NY could control river traffic within NY all the way to the border w/ NJ, and NJ could control river traffic within NJ all the way to the border w/ NY, leaving Congress w/ the power to control the traffic as
it crossed the state line. => Congress could not invalidate his monopoly as long as he only transported
passengers within NY. The S.Ct., however, found that Congress could invalidate his
monopoly since it was operational on an interstate channel of navigation.
○ Gibbons:
license from the federal, Ogden:
license from the NY city
○ Ogden obtained injunction
against Gibbons from the NY courts.
Issue
○ If a state
law conflicts w/ a congressional act regulating commerce, is the congressional
act controlling?
Ruling
○ The Court assumed that interstate
commerce required movement of the subject of regulation across state borders. The Constitution enumerates power but does not
define power (If you define something you specify it to its particularity, when
you enumerate it you sort of put it out in bullet points).
○ The decision contains the
following principles;
(i)
Commerce is “intercourse, all its branches, and is regulated by
prescribing rules for carrying on that intercourse.”;
(ii)
commerce
among the states cannot stop at the external boundary-line of each state, but
may be introduced into the interior... Comprehensive as the word “among” is, it may very properly
be restricted to that commerce which concerns more states than one.;
(iii) The Commerce power is
the power to “regulate”, that is “to prescribe the rule by which commerce is to be governed” which “may be
exercised to its utmost extent, and acknowledges no limitations other than are
prescribed in the Constitution.”
