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Gibbons v. Ogden: John Marshall, Steamboats, and the Commerce Clause. By Herbert A. Johnson. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2010. Pp. 188. Cloth, $34.95; paper, $17.95.)
Reviewed by Sandra F. VanBurkleo
In this useful addition to the Landmark Law Cases and American Society series, Herbert Johnson - one of the deans of early American constitutional history - provides an authoritative account of the career and impact of John Marshall's 1824 Gibbons v. Ogden ruling. With McCulloch, Marbury, and a handful of other Marshallian landmarks, Gibbons stands even today as a marker along the path by which federal courts - and indeed the federal government more generally - managed to interject meaningful control over the shape and direction of an emerging national marketplace. In Gibbons, the facts of the case implicated America's transportation system; but in the end, the decision, particularly its nonbinding commentary (or dicta), powerfully shaped federal-state conversations about national and international trade well into modern times and helped establish the Supreme Court as a mediator in federal-state disputes.
To his credit, Johnson is not content to...