Barron v. Baltimore

When the decision was given, Marshall spoke for a unanimous Court. Marshall dismissed Barron's suit because the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction in the matter. Barron had appealed from a state court. Thus the Supreme Court could act only if it were true that the Fifth Amendment restrained the state of Maryland. But none of the provisions of the Bill of Rights applied to the states.

"The question thus presented is," Marshall began, "of great importance, but not of much difficulty." He then advanced three arguments in support of his conclusion--one based on the nature of the Constitution, one on its language, and one on its history.

In his first argument, Marshall repeated his often expressed union theory of popular sovereignty. Through state constitutions, the people of each state united and directly created a state government. Through the U.S. Constitution, the people of the United States came together and created a general government. The constitution the people had given each level of government determined that level's powers.

The Constitution was ordained and established by the people of the United States for themselves, for their own government, and not for the government of the individual states. Each state established a constitution for itself, and . . . provided such limitations and restitutions on the powers of its particular government as its judgment dictated. The people of the United States formed such a government for the United States as they supposed . . . best calculated to promote their interests.

The U.S. Constitution created a federal government, and the people did the creating. Thus, the powers and limitations they conferred through that Constitution were "naturally" and "necessarily" applicable only to the federal government the Constitution created.

The concept of sovereignty with the people helped explain the Constitution's language. The Constitution contains three kinds of statements limiting power, Marshall declared. Some statements directly mention the federal government, while others mention the states. Yet a third type, which includes the Fifth Amendment, places limits on power framed in general terms, without specifically mentioning either the federal or the state government.

These general limitations, Marshall argued, must be read as applying only to the federal government. As proof he quoted Article I, Section 9: "No bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed." This is immediately followed by Article I, Section 10: "No state shall . . . pass any bill of attainder . . . " Obviously, the general limit in Section 9 applied only to the federal government. If it also affected the states, Section 10 simply would not be needed.

To further explain his interpretation, Marshall presented a third argument, one based on the history of the Bill of Rights. Had the people, he noted, wanted to limit state governments, they would have called state constitutional conventions. Such conventions provided a much simpler procedure than the "unwieldy and cumbrous machinery" of amending the U.S. Constitution. Moreover, when the Constitution was ratified, the Bill of Rights was added precisely because the people feared the federal government and not because they dreaded abuses of power by state governments. This reason for opposing ratification of the Constitution was "universally understood" and "part of the history of the day."

Barron was John Marshall's last constitutional opinion, written when he was already in failing health and profoundly worried about the state of the union. Federal-state relations were in a crisis. In 1832, a convention in South Carolina had nullified a congressional tariff law. The same year, Georgia had refused to enforce a Supreme Court decision (Worcester v. Georgia) affecting Native American rights.

While Marshall was sensitive to these political conflicts, his decision was historically accurate. The surviving records of the conventions ratifying the Constitution supported his statements. So did a significant body of previous decisions by state courts.

As Marshall stated, Barron was of enormous significance. Later courts accepted the decision and expanded it to all of the Bill of Rights. Thus they prevented the federal government from interfering when a state allegedly violated an individual's civil rights.

After the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment (ratified in 1868) required the states to provide "due process" ("nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.") to its citizens. Since the 1920s, the courts have incorporated various rights into the Fourteenth Amendment by defining them as essential to "due process." But the process has been slow, inconsistent, and controversial.

American law and American society might have evolved in entirely different ways had Marshall ruled otherwise in Barron. Yet his decision was totally consistent with the beliefs of the Constitution's authors. Firmly convinced that local officials posed little threat to individual rights, the nation's founders primarily feared the distant and oppressive federal government.