Aaron Ogden and Thomas Gibbons
Explanation:
John Marshall’s last great decision, Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), established national supremacy in regulating interstate commerce. In 1808, Robert Fulton and Robert R. Livingston (Jefferson’s minister to France in 1801), who pioneered commercial use of the steamboat, won from the New York legislature the exclusive right to operate steamboats on the state’s rivers and lakes. Fulton and Livingston then gave Aaron Ogden the exclusive right to navigate the Hudson River between New York and New Jersey. Thomas Gibbons, however, operated ships under a federal license that competed with Ogden. On behalf of a unanimous Court, Marshall ruled that the monopoly granted by the state to Ogden conflicted with the federal Coasting Act, under which Gibbons operated.
Congressional power to regulate commerce, the Court said, “like all others vested in Congress, is complete in itself, may be exercised to its utmost extent, and acknowledges no limitations other than are prescribed in the Constitution.”
