Judicial branch · Landmark case
Gibbons v. Ogden
22 U.S. (9 Wheat.) 1 (1824) · Opinion of the Court
What you should know
This page explains the Court’s holding in plain language, where the official text lives, and what to check next.
The controlling document is the Court’s opinion. Verify language and context on official sources before relying on secondary accounts.
The Court held that Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce includes navigation, and that a New York statute granting a steamboat monopoly could not bar a vessel licensed under federal law from operating in interstate waters. Marshall defined commerce broadly as commercial intercourse among the states, not merely the buying and selling of goods.
Background
New York had granted Robert Livingston and Robert Fulton (and their successors, including Aaron Ogden) exclusive rights to operate steamboats in New York waters. Thomas Gibbons ran a competing service between Elizabethtown, New Jersey, and New York under a federal coastal license. Ogden obtained an injunction in New York courts. The case reached the Supreme Court as a clash between state monopoly power and federal commerce authority.
Gibbons is the foundational Commerce Clause case.
Its broad definition of commerce and of Congress’s power over interstate commercial activity became the baseline for later expansion — including the New Deal-era cases and Wickard v. Filburn. It also established that valid federal regulation of interstate commerce displaces conflicting state law.
Vote and authorship
| Majority | Marshall, C.J. |
|---|---|
| Concurrence | Johnson, J. |
| Dissent | None |
Commerce, undoubtedly, is traffic, but it is something more: it is intercourse. It describes the commercial intercourse between nations, and parts of nations, in all its branches, and is regulated by prescribing rules for carrying on that intercourse.
Chief Justice Marshall · Gibbons v. Ogden
How it fits in government
Legislative branch
Anchors Congress’s Article I power to regulate commerce among the states.
Federalism
Limits state barriers to interstate commercial activity when Congress has spoken.
Judicial branch
Early example of the Court policing the boundary between state and federal commercial regulation.
Official records visitors may need
Related research paths
Wickard v. Filburn
Later high-water mark of Commerce Clause breadth
United States v. Lopez
Modern limit on that breadth
Commerce Clause
Article I, Section 8