1. Georgia legislature had granted land in the Yazoo Delta to land speculators.

2. It was discovered that the legislators had been bribed. A new legislature was elected and the grants were rescinded, on grounds that they had been given by fraud.

3. Original grantees, and those who had brought land from them, sued.

4. Marshall and the Court upheld the original grantees, saying that Georgia had made a contract in granting the land. The rescinding act had impaired that contract, and the Constitution prohibits a state from passing "any Law impairing the Obligation of Contract." That the original contract had involved fraud was irrelevant. A contract is a contract.

5. KEY PRECEDENT: This was the first time the Supreme Court declared a state law invalid for being contrary to the Constitution.

1. New Hampshire tried to revise Dartmouth College's charter, giving the state the right to appoint the Board of Trustees.

2. Old Board of Trustees sued, claiming that the original charter was a contract, and the state could not alter or otherwise impair it.

3. State court upheld the state, claiming that the college's charter was a public charter, not a private one, and thus was not a contract within the meaning of the Constitution.

4. Marshall and the court declared that the charter was indeed a contract, and could not be impaired.

5. PRECEDENT: Any charted corporation, including businesses, now seemed to be outside the control of the states, once they were granted their charters.

1. New York passed a law relieving insolvent debtors of their obligations, if they were contracted before the passage of the act.

2. Marshall and the Court ruled that state bankruptcy laws in general were constitutional, so long as Congress passed no such law, but that New York's law impaired contracts, and was thus unconstitutional.

1. Maryland cannot tax the Federal Government or one of its agencies, because the "Power to Tax involves the power to destroy," and the Federal Government must be supreme.

2. Upheld loose interpretation of Constitution by ruling that the Federal Government DID have the power to establish a national bank. Used Hamilton's argument. Doctrine of Implied Powers.

1. Virginia claimed that state court decisions were not subject to federal review, citing the Eleventh Amendment.

2. Marshall reasserted the supremacy of the Supreme Court of the United States over any state courts, and stressed the doctrine of National Supremacy.

1. National Supremacy again.

2. Expansion of the Commerce Clause. "Commerce" means more than simple buying and selling. It includes navigation, travel, and "every species of commercial intercourse."

3. Congressional power to regulate interstate and foreign commerce "does not stop at the jurisdictional lines of the several states."