McCulloch v. Maryland

Facts

The first Congress elected under the Constitution exercised the power to incorporate a bank. Its bill for incorporating the Bank of the United States was resisted in open debate and then in the executive cabinet before it became a law. The original act was allowed to expire. The Court says the embarrassments the government faced after the refusal to revive it convinced even the measure's strongest opponents of its necessity, and the present law followed. That law, too, incorporated the Bank of the United States. The charter did not say where the bank's branches would be, and a branch was established in the State of Maryland. Maryland's legislature passed a law imposing a tax on the Bank of the United States. The Court read it as a tax on the operations of the bank. It was not a tax on the bank's real property, paid in common with other real property in the State, or on the interest Maryland citizens may hold in the bank. In the case that followed, Maryland denied that the act of Congress bound it, and McCulloch contested the validity of Maryland's act.

Issues

1. Does Congress have power to incorporate a bank when the Constitution does not list that power among the enumerated powers?
2. Does the word necessary, in the clause letting Congress make all laws necessary and proper for carrying its powers into execution, limit Congress to means that are indispensable?
3. May the State of Maryland, without violating the Constitution, tax the branch of the Bank of the United States in that State?

Holding

Congress had power to incorporate the Bank of the United States, and the act to incorporate it is a law made in pursuance of the Constitution; its branches are equally constitutional. Maryland's law imposing a tax on the bank is unconstitutional and void, because the States have no power to burden or control the operations of laws Congress enacts to carry its powers into execution.