Research Catalog

Title

Aggressive nationalism : McCulloch v. Maryland and the foundation of federal authority in the young republic / Richard E. Ellis.

Author

Ellis, Richard E.

Publication

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2007.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

265 p.; 25 cm.

Summary

• "McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) has long been recognized to be one of the most significant decisions ever handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Indeed, many scholars have argued that 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 counterproductive: 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." "The first in-depth examination of McCulloch v. Maryland, Aggressive Nationalism offers a 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."--book jacket.

Uniform Title

University press scholarship online.

Subject

• McCulloch, James W. > Trials, litigation, etc
• Bank of the United States (Baltimore, Md.) > Trials, litigation, etc
• States' rights (American politics) > History
• Banks and banking, Central > History. > United States
• Exclusive and concurrent legislative powers > United States > History
• Maryland > Trials, litigation, etc

Genre/Form

• History
• Trials, litigation, etc.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 219-255) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

The U.S. Supreme Court versus the states -- The second bank of the United States -- The states versus the Second Bank of the United States -- McCulloch v. Maryland -- Virginia's response to McCulloch v. Maryland -- Ohio and the Bank of the United States -- Ohio and Georgia before the U.S. Supreme Court.

ISBN

9780195323566

LCCN

^^2006100984

OCLC

76937473

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library