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As a statement about government power and constitutional interpretation, the Supreme Court case McCulloch v. Maryland is second only to Marbury v. Madison in its lasting influence. In McCulloch (1819), the Supreme Court adopted a broad construction of Congress's powers and of the "necessary and proper" clause that enabled those powers. Writing for the Court, Chief Justice John Marshall argued that the Constitution was established by the American people, understood as a nation and as the seat of sovereignty. As the people, through the Constitution, granted Congress legislative power over certain things, so is that power complete; federal laws made under those powers are superior to any state law (e.g., a tax) that operates to challenge or impede it. McCulloch thus announced one of the earliest and most important interpretations of the Constitution in American politics, a nationalist interpretation. The immediate beneficiary of Marshall's opinion was the leading national policy of the time, the Second Bank of the U.S. (2BUS). Its status grew through the constitutional sanction for its existence (as a "necessary and proper" means to revenue policy) and its constitutional immunity from state taxes.
In Aggressive Nationalism, historian Richard E. Ellis observes that "no in-depth study" exists of the case. Academic discussions of McCulloch are limited to surveys of constitutional law and to biographies of John Marshall. They both view the case and its issues simply from Marshall's perspective, that is, uncritically. By contrast, Ellis examines the case via the arguments of the "losing side" (i.e., Maryland). This method leads to a broad examination of the context of McCulloch: early nineteenth-century controversy over not only political economy, but also which level of government--state or national--would direct it. In his detailed discussion, Ellis presents strong evidence that Justice Marshall decided the case not in its own, rather narrow, legal terms but as a means to assert a...