Product Description

McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) has long been recognized to be one of the most significant decisions ever handed down by the United States Supreme Court. Indeed, many scholars have argued it is the greatest opinion handed down by the greatest Chief Justice, in which he declared the act creating the Second Bank of the United States constitutional and Maryland's attempt to tax it unconstitutional. Although it is now recognized as the foundational statement for a strong and active federal government, the immediate impact of the ruling was short-lived and widely criticized.
Placing the decision and the public reaction to it in their proper historical context, Richard E. Ellis finds that Maryland, though unopposed to the Bank, helped to bring the case before the Court and a sympathetic Chief Justice, who worked behind the scenes to save the embattled institution. Almost all treatments of the case consider it solely from Marshall's perspective, yet a careful examination reveals other, even more important issues that the Chief Justice chose to ignore. Ellis demonstrates that the points which mattered most to the States were not treated by the Court's decision: the private, profit-making nature of the Second Bank, its right to establish branches wherever it wanted with immunity from state taxation, and the right of the States to tax the Bank simply for revenue purposes. Addressing these issues would have undercut Marshall's nationalist view of the Constitution, and his unwillingness to adequately deal with them produced immediate, widespread, and varied dissatisfaction among the States. Ellis argues that Marshall's "aggressive nationalism" was ultimately counter-productive: his overreaching led to Jackson's democratic rejection of the decision and failed to reconcile states' rights to the effective operation of the institutions of federal governance.
Elegantly written, full of new information, and the first in-depth examination of McCulloch v. Maryland, Aggressive Nationalism offers an incisive, fresh interpretation of this familiar decision central to understanding the shifting politics of the early republic as well as the development of federal-state relations, a source of constant division in American politics, past and present.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #607662 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 280 pages

Review

"Richard E. Ellis has once again earned great admiration from all students of American history. Lucid, forceful, and important, Aggressive Nationalism will fundamentally change the standard views of emerging American nationalism and the fascinating politics that lay behind it. It is a major contribution from a consistently impressive and pioneering historian."--Sean Wilentz, Princeton University
"Richard Ellis always finds new ways of understanding familiar topics - with the added, singular virtue of being so right. A judicious historian, Ellis determinedly renders historical events in real time and place. John Marshall's McCulloch v. Maryland opinion--long a chestnut of constitutional interpretation and analysis--endures as a bold statement for perennial problems of federalism and constitutional interpretation (despite Justice Scalia's misguided disdain). Ellis effectively challenges Marshall's questionable determination to protect the Bank of the United States; but Ellis also properly recognizes that Marshall's striking language remains the standard for a wise, pragmatic, and evolving interpretation of the Constitution. We can be grateful for this extraordinary book."--Stanley Kutler, author of Privilege and Creative Destruction: The Charles River Bridge Case
"Both scholarly and readable, this study puts the great case of McCulloch v. Maryland in a clear historical context. It will enlighten both students and specialists."--Michael Les Benedict, Ohio State University
"Richard Ellis's study usefully places McCulloch v. Maryland in its broad historical context. By doing so, Ellis demonstrates yet again how Chief Justice John Marshall cleverly situated his most sweeping constitutional pronouncements in cases that raised only narrow issues and would not, when decided, present the Supreme Court with difficult problems of enforcement."--William E. Nelson, New York University School of Law
"Richard E. Ellis has once again earned great admiration from all students of American history. Lucid, forceful, and important, Aggressive Nationalism will fundamentally change the standard views of emerging American nationalism and the fascinating politics that lay behind it. It is a major contribution from a consistently impressive and pioneering historian."--Sean Wilentz, Princeton University
"The Ellis text offers insightful analysis of how individual states fared before, during, and after the national bank controversy."--Law and Politics Book Review

About the Author

Richard E. Ellis is Professor of History at the University of Buffalo, SUNY. Among his published works are The Jeffersonian Crisis: Courts and Politics in the Young Republic (1971) and The Union at Risk: Jacksonian Democracy, State's Rights, and the Nullification Crisis (1987). He has held grants from The John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies.

Customer Reviews

A New Analysis of one of the Most Important Supreme Court Decisions in American History
This book is a sophisticated reinterpretation of a critical court case in the early national period. McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) has been one of the two most cited cases of the Marshall Court, enforcing the implied powers of the national government over those of the states. Ellis turns that fundamental result on its head and asks what the immediate repercussions of the decision might have been. He finds that immediately thereafter the ruling was largely ignored, even widely criticized. He also offers a counter to the dominant position about Marshall's nation-building theme, by suggesting that if we move beyond the Chief Justice's nationalistic perspective alternative positions were appropriate but largely ignored by the decision.

The case was really about the constitutionality of the Second Bank of the United States, a public/private partnership that some believed represented a gross overstepping of legitimate federal power. At a fundamental level it represented a debate over national prerogative versus states' rights. Marshall ignored in his opinion many of the points that seemed to be of the most concern to the defendants. Those included the propriety of the federal government chartering a private, profit-making national bank, that bank's authority to conduct its business wherever it wished, its imperviousness to taxation and regulation, and a host of other concerns. Looked at in this manner, the state of Maryland had an important matter for resolution that Marshall decided not to address.

Instead John Marshall reemphasized the power of the federal government to the exclusion of the rights of the states. This important contention would consume national/state relations through the Civil War era and some might say that it is still far from settled. "Aggressive Nationalism" is a good title for this book as Marshall defended that to the exclusion of any sense of state prerogative.

A Rich Study of one of John Marshall's key nationalist decisions
The author, Richard Ellis, wrote the classic study of the Jeffersonian period and the courts, "The Jeffersonian Crisis: Courts and Politics in the Young Republic," in 1971. So he is intimately familiar with the Marshall court and, equally important, the context in which important precedent-setting decisions were handed down, including the subject of this book: "McCulloch v. Maryland." The articles and books on this case would weigh a ton if collected; what is different about this book? Ellis for one thing takes his time in setting the stage--i.e., he does not just jump into the Supreme Court arguments and decision. His introduction illuminates many of the key themes he will develop more fully in the book. Next he discusses the role of the Court in early federal/state relations, and how the Judiciary Acts played a role. An entire chapter is devoted to the two Banks of the U.S. which gave rise to the case, how the states reacted to them, and how the state actions varied from state to state.

It is not until page 76 that we get into the actual case itself and Marshall's epic decision--after we have been well prepared to understand the context of what was occurring. Ellis carefully traces the contents of the arguments which he believes afforded the Court a "perceptive and searching exploration of the issues." There are many subordinate issues in addition to the reach of the "necessary and proper clause" and state taxing of federal instrumentalities, and Ellis covers them all concisely. An interesting point that Ellis makes that had not occurred to me was the close interconnection between the case and the concurrent debate about the power of the federal government to develop internal improvements. An entire chapter is devoted to Virginia's response to the decision, which gave rise to the famous exchange of anonymous(?) articles between Marshall and Spencer Roane and others regarding the decision. As usual, Ellis' research is comprehensive and impeccable, since he really is intimately familiar with all this. Next, the reaction to the decision in Ohio (probably the most hyper state) and Georgia is reviewed. Finally, in a "Coda," there is discussion of other states in opposition to the decision, including Tennessee, North Carolina and Kentucky. A bit about Andy Jackson and his fireworks with the bank also is included.

All of this analysis is covered in 218 pages, with an additional 36 pages of comprehensive notes (but no bibliography). Ellis writes with a clarity and cogency seldom seen in work on the Court, so that even a constitutional history novice is soon at home because Ellis so well explains not just what happened but why it happened. The typography is unusually bright and easy to read--I wish Oxford had identified the typeface. A very valuable resource even for the seasoned student of the Court.

The Big Case
For those with an interest in the early history of the U.S. Constitution and the key federal case that largely determined the future power balance between the national government and states.

This book also will be of great value to those desiring a better understanding of the country's first banking system and the economic issues present as our country took wing. Actually, this effort is more about the Second Bank of the United States than the legal proceeding of McCulloch v. Maryland.

Professor Ellis downplays the contemporary importance of this famous case while also, I think, undervaluing the contributions of our greatest Chief Justice, John Marshall.