John Marshall
Why McCulloch v. Maryland – now 200 years old – is not a “big government” manifesto
This year marks the 200th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling in McCulloch v. Maryland. In that case, Chief Justice John Marshall upheld Congress’s power to charter a national bank—a distant forerunner of the modern Federal Reserve System. Nearly all...
Judicial Revision: An “assumption of powers never meant to be granted”
EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is an excerpt of the book (chapter 16) Government by Judiciary: The Transformation of the Fourteenth Amendment, Foreword by Forrest McDonald (2nd ed.) (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1997). In this text, Berger rejects the conventional view...
Judicial “Discretion” in 1787
EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is an excerpt of Raoul Berger’s book (chapter 16) Government by Judiciary: The Transformation of the Fourteenth Amendment, Foreword by Forrest McDonald (2nd ed.) (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1997). A common historicist...
Misreading McCulloch v. Maryland
The common understanding of the landmark McCulloch v Maryland case is that it argued in favor of broad congressional “implied” powers. But, an important scholarly paper shows this standard narrative to be greatly exaggerated. Published at the University of...