led an act of the Georgia legislature, informing the
state that it was not sovereign, but "a part of a large empire, ... a
member of the American union; and that union has a constitution ...
which imposes limits to the legislatures of the several states." In the
case of McCulloch _vs._ Maryland, decided in 1819, he declared void an
act of the Maryland legislature designed to paralyze the branches of the
United States Bank established in that state. In the same year, in the
still more memorable Dartmouth College case, he annulled an act of the
New Hampshire legislature which infringed upon the charter received by
the college from King George long before. That charter, he declared, was
a contract between the state and the college, which the legislature
under the federal Constitution could not impair. Two years later he
stirred the wrath of Virginia by summoning her to the bar of the Supreme
Court to answer in a case in which the validity of one of her laws was
involved and then justified his action in a powerful opinion rendered in
the case of Cohens _vs._ Virginia.

All these decisions aroused the legislatures of the states. They passed
sheaves of resolutions protesting and condemning; but Marshall never
turned and never stayed. The Constitution of the United States, he
fairly thundered at them, is the supreme law of the land; the Supreme
Court is the proper tribunal to pass finally upon the validity of the
laws of the states; and "those sovereignties," far from possessing the
right of review and nullification, are irrevocably bound by the
decisions of that Court. This was strong medicine for the authors of the
Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions and for the members of the Hartford
convention; but they had to take it.

=The Doctrine of Implied Powers.=--While restraining Congress in the
Marbury case and the state legislatures in a score of cases, Marshall
also laid the judicial foundation for a broad and liberal view of the
Constitution as opposed to narrow and strict construction. In McCulloch
_vs._ Maryland, he construed generously the words "necessary and proper"
in such a way as to confer upon Congress a wide range of "implied
powers" in addition to their express powers. That case involved, among
other things, the question whether the act establishing the second
United States Bank was authorized by the Constitution. Marshall answered
in the affirmative. Congress, ran his reasoning, has large powers over
taxation and t