Gibbons operated a steamboat between a New Jersey port and New …show more content…
The first standard involved the meaning of the term “commerce”. It was contended by Ogden’s counsel that commerce meant nothing more than buying and selling. Marshall, however, held that the power to regulate navigation was “as expressly granted, as if that term had been added to the word commerce” . He then stated that commerce not only encompassed every type of commercial intercourse among states and nations, but also possessed the power to prescribe rules for carrying out those procedures. He claimed that, “In regulating commerce with foreign nations, the power of congress does not stop at the jurisdictional lines of the several states. It would be a very useless power, if it could not pass those lines. The commerce of the United States with foreign nations, is that of the whole United States; every district has a right to participate in