ing number of his associates were ready to go considerably
farther.

While the agitation in Congress against the Court was at its height,
Marshall handed down his decision in Gibbons vs. Ogden, and shortly
after, that in Osborn vs. United States Bank. * In the latter case,
which was initiated by the Bank, the plaintiff in error, who was
Treasurer of the State of Ohio, brought forward Article XI of the
Amendments to the Constitution as a bar to the action, but Marshall held
that this Amendment did not prevent a state officer from being sued
for acts done in excess of his rightful powers. He also reiterated and
amplified the principles of M'Culloch vs. Maryland. Three years later he
gave his opinions in Brown vs. Maryland and Ogden vs. Saunders. * * In
the former Marshall's opinion was dissented from by a single associate,
but in the latter the Chief Justice found himself for the first and
only time in his entire incumbency in the role of dissenter in a
constitutional case. The decision of the majority, speaking through
Justice Washington, laid down the principle that the obligation of
a private executory contract cannot be said to be "impaired" in
a constitutional sense by the adverse effect of legislative acts
antedating the making of the contract; and thus the dangerous ambiguity
of Sturges vs. Crowinshield was finally resolved in favor of the States.

* 9 Wheaton, 738.

* * 12 Wheaton, 213.

In the course of the next few years the Court, speaking usually through
the Chief Justice, decided several cases on principles favoring local
interest, sometimes indeed curtailing the operation of previously
established principles. For example, the Court held that, in the absence
of specific legislation by Congress to the contrary, a State may erect
a dam across navigable waters of the United States for local purposes *;
that the mere grant of a charter to a corporation does not prevent the
State from taxing such corporation on its franchises, notwithstanding
that "the power to tax involves the power to destroy" * *; that the
Federal Courts have no right to set a state enactment aside on the
ground that it had divested vested rights, unless it had done so through
impairing the obligation of contracts * * *; that the first eight
Amendments to the Constitution do not limit state power, but only
Federal power * * * * that decisions adverse to state laws must have the
concurrence of a majority of the Court. * * * * *