Cooley v. Board of Wardens of the Port of Philadelphia

12 How. (53 U.S.) 299 (1852), argued 9–11 Feb. 1852, decided 2 Mar. 1852 by vote of 6 to 2; Curtis for the Court, Daniel concurring, McLean and Wayne in dissent, McKinley absent. A Pennsylvania statute provided that any vessel entering or leaving the port of Philadelphia was required to pay one‐half the usual pilotage fee if its master chose not to employ a local pilot. The fee went into a fund for the relief of infirm pilots and pilots' widows and orphans. The fee affected interstate and international commerce flowing into Philadelphia and was challenged as an interference with Congress's power to regulate such commerce.

The Taney Court had previously been unable to resolve Commerce Clause issues presented in New York v. Miln (1837), the License Cases (1847), and the Passenger Cases (1849) because of complications posed by issues of slavery and federalism that lay under the surface of all Commerce Clause cases of the era. The Court had either evaded such questions or, in trying to resolve them, had splintered confusingly. In Cooley, the Court was finally able to achieve a coherent resolution of a Commerce Clause issue. Justice Benjamin R. Curtis defined the question in terms of the subject matter of regulation rather than the nature of the commerce power, with some subjects being national in scope and others, like pilotage laws, local. Though this formula failed to enlist the support of states'‐rights enthusiasts such as Justice Peter V. Daniel and nationalists such as Justices John McLean and James M. Wayne, its pragmatism has proved enduring. Cooley ranks with Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) as one of the most important Commerce Clause cases of the nineteenth century.

See also Commerce Power.

— Donald M. Roper

Cooley v. Board of Wardens of Port of Philadelphia, 12 Howard 299 (1852). In the case of Gibbons v. Ogden (9 Wheaton 1 [1824]), Chief Justice John Marshall intimated that the commerce clause of the Constitution gave Congress exclusive power over inter-state and foreign commerce. But subsequent Courts fell into confusion over the question. In the Cooley case, Associate Justice Benjamin R. Curtis resolved much of the uncertainty by distinguishing interstate commerce, which demanded uniform congressional regulation, from local concerns (such as control of pilotage in various ports), where states remained free to act during the silence of Congress. The Cooley case conclusively established the Supreme Court as arbiter of federal and state conflict over commerce.

Bibliography

Benson, Paul R., Jr. The Supreme Court and the Commerce Clause. New York: Dunellen, 1970.

Frankfurter, Felix. The Commerce Clause under Marshall, Taney and White. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1937.

—Charles Fairman/A. R.

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