Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 1824

Gibbons v. Ogden

22 U.S. 1 | 6 L. Ed. 23 | 9 Wheat. 1 | 1824 U.S. LEXIS 370

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Takeaway

In short, this case established that the Commerce Clause includes interstate navigation and that a state law must yield when it conflicts with Congress’s regulation of interstate commerce.

Background

New York granted Robert Livingston and Robert Fulton an exclusive privilege to navigate New York waters by steam. Aaron Ogden acquired an assignment of part of that privilege, including the route between Elizabethtown, New Jersey, and New York City.

Thomas Gibbons operated the steamships Bellona and Stoudinger on that interstate route. His vessels were federally enrolled and licensed under Congress’s coasting-trade laws. Ogden sued in New York Chancery and obtained an injunction barring Gibbons from using steam-powered vessels in New York waters. The Chancellor made the injunction permanent, and New York’s highest court affirmed. Gibbons appealed to the Supreme Court.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether Congress’s power to regulate commerce includes the power to regulate navigation.

Holding

Yes. Commerce includes commercial intercourse in all its branches, including navigation.

Reasoning

The Court rejected the argument that “commerce” means only buying, selling, or exchanging commodities. In constitutional usage, commerce is broader: it is commercial intercourse among nations and states, and navigation is an indispensable means of carrying on that intercourse.

Longstanding national practice confirmed this reading. From the beginning, Congress had regulated vessels, seamen, and navigation as commercial matters, and the Constitution itself refers to vessels, ports, entry, clearance, and duties in provisions governing commercial regulation.

The Court also reasoned that a power to regulate commerce that excluded navigation would be practically hollow. A national commercial system necessarily includes rules governing the vessels that enter ports and move goods and persons between jurisdictions.

Issue #2

Whether Congress’s commerce power reaches interstate navigation occurring within a state’s territorial waters.

Holding

Yes. Congress may regulate interstate and foreign commerce wherever that commerce travels, including waters within a state, although commerce that is completely internal to one state remains outside the Commerce Clause.

Reasoning

The phrase “among the several States” means intermingled with the states, not merely commerce that occurs at a state boundary. Interstate trade necessarily begins in one state, ends in another, and may pass through the interior of one or more states.

The Court distinguished interstate commerce from commerce that is completely internal to a single state—trade conducted solely between persons or places within that state and not extending to or affecting other states. That wholly internal commerce remains subject to state authority.

Because Gibbons’s route ran between New Jersey and New York, it was interstate commerce. Congress’s power therefore could operate on the New York waters through which that interstate voyage passed.

Issue #3

Whether New York’s steam-navigation monopoly could bar vessels licensed under federal coasting-trade laws from operating between New Jersey and New York.

Holding

No. The federal coasting license authorized Gibbons’s vessels to carry on the coasting trade, and New York’s contrary prohibition was void under the Supremacy Clause.

Reasoning

Congress’s coasting-trade statute did more than identify vessels as American. It provided that qualifying enrolled vessels were entitled to the privileges of vessels in the coasting trade and directed federal officials to issue a license authorizing the vessel to carry on that trade.

The Court treated the federal license as a real permission, not a mere certificate of nationality or a reduction in tonnage duties. A state could not leave a vessel with federal privileges intact in theory while wholly preventing it from entering the waters needed to exercise those privileges in practice.

New York’s law prohibited steam-powered vessels from navigating its waters unless they obtained permission from the state monopoly holders. That prohibition directly conflicted with Congress’s authorization for federally licensed vessels to conduct the coasting trade. Under the Supremacy Clause, the state law had to yield to the federal law.

The Court also rejected the contention that passenger transportation lay outside commerce. Navigation for the transportation of persons for hire, like navigation for the transportation of cargo, is part of the commercial marine and may be regulated by Congress. In any event, New York’s injunction turned on the vessels’ use of steam, not on whether they carried passengers or freight.

The Court did not need to decide the separate argument that New York’s monopoly also conflicted with Congress’s patent power. The direct collision between the state monopoly and the federal coasting license was sufficient to resolve the case.

Concurrences

Justice Johnson

Reasoning

Justice Johnson agreed with the judgment but would have rested the decision more directly on the exclusive character of the federal commerce power. In his view, the Constitution transferred to Congress the states’ preexisting power to control interstate and foreign commerce, including the power to decide what commerce should remain free from restraint.

He reasoned that commercial freedom is itself a form of regulation. Because a sovereign’s commercial power includes the power to restrict commerce and the power to leave it unrestrained, the power must be vested in one authority when interstate commerce is involved. State restrictions on interstate navigation therefore could not coexist with Congress’s authority to prescribe the national rule.

Johnson regarded navigation as part of commerce itself, rather than merely an incidental means of carrying commerce. The transportation of goods, passengers, intelligence, and services all formed part of the commercial intercourse the Constitution placed under national control.

He disagreed with the majority’s emphasis on the federal coasting license as the source of Gibbons’s right. To Johnson, the license chiefly conferred special American commercial privileges and exemptions; the more fundamental protection came from the Constitution’s commitment to free interstate commercial intercourse. Still, the license independently demonstrated that Congress had taken the coasting trade under federal supervision.