In the early 1800's, the Supreme Court decisions on the cases of McCulloch v. Ogden represented a bold abuse of the power by the Supreme Court in favor of the national government. In both of these examples, the Supreme Court wrongly interpreted the Constitution, gave too much power to the national government, and brazenly ignored the 10th Amendment of the United States Constitution. This Amendment states that, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people," (U.S. Const. amend. X). In the cases of McCulloch v. Maryland and Gibbons v. Ogden, the Supreme Court, under the leadership of Chief Justice John Marshall, placed far too much power in the hands of the national government when it, as the Constitution says, should have been placed in the hands of the individual states.
In the case of McCulloch v. Maryland during the year 1819, the state of Maryland claimed that Congress had violated the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution when they had chartered the Second Bank of the United States two years prior. By this time, financial stability had become a major issue of concern for the United States. In an attempt to revive a failing economy after the War of 1812, the United States created the Second Bank of the United States. Angered by this new regulation by the federal government, the state of Maryland decided to place a tax on this National Bank in hopes of destroying it. James McCulloch, a Baltimore area banker, refused to pay this tax and was convicted by a Maryland court.
