SCOTUS 101 Spanning the Decades Every June 17, Bostonians packed the Warren Bridge, here in 1843, to get to Bunker Hill to fete that 1775 victory over British forces.
TROUBLED BRIDGE OVER WATER In February 1837, the U.S. Supreme Court, voting 5-2, rejected a claim by owners of a toll bridge in Boston that the Massachusetts legislature had acted unconstitutionally in authorizing construction of a second, competing bridge. The ruling meant little to Bostonians. The second span, the Warren Bridge, connecting their city with the Charlestown neighborhood, then a separate village just across the Charles River, had long been completed. Warren Bridge tolls had so quickly paid off the initial investors that crossings had become free. But the high court’s ruling profoundly affected commercial life in the United States, marking a turning point in the way that government controlled business, encouraged investment in new technology, and, more basically, defined its own legitimate purposes. The decision, handed down just 18 days before President Andrew Jackson’s second term ended, was the ultimate victory of
Jackson’s populist approach over the more conservative view of government fostered by the Founding Fathers, who tended to defer to the sanctity of business contracts. Rather than adhere to legal technicalities, Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote in Charles River Bridge, government had as its core purpose the enactment of policies benefiting the entire populace. Charlestown had been settled by some 100 Puritans in 1639, a year before Boston was founded. The settlements obviously needed to trade with one another, and in 1650 the colonial Massachusetts government awarded Harvard College—in need of a reliable funding source—the right to operate a ferry service between the communities. During the ensuing 100-plus years, rising traffic in goods and passengers made clear a ferry was not the most efficient way across the Charles. From the state John Hancock and 83 other investors obtained a charter to build a bridge and, for 40
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
CHARLES RIVER BRIDGE V. WARREN BRIDGE 36 US 420 (1837) THE WELFARE OF THE PUBLIC CAN TRUMP PRIVATE CONTRACTS.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
BY DANIEL B. MOSKOWITZ
