Brown v. Maryland

Brown v. Maryland, 25 U.S. (12 Wheat.) 419 (1827), was a significant United States Supreme Court case regarding the definition of the Commerce Clause in Article 1 sec. 8, cl. 3 of the U.S. Constitution. The state of Maryland passed a law requiring importers of foreign goods to obtain a license for selling their products. Brown was charged under this law and appealed. Chief Justice John Marshall delivered the opinion of the court, ruling that Maryland's statute violated the commerce clause and the federal law was supreme. He alleged that the power of a state to tax goods did not apply if they remained in their "original package". A license tax on the importer was essentially the same as a tax on an import itself. Despite arguing the case for Maryland, future chief justice Roger Taney admitted that the case was correctly decided.