http://www.oyez.org/cases/1792-1850/1796/ U.S. Supreme Court Decisions, presented by The Oyez Project (www.oyez.org) en-us <p>Did Congress violate the Constitution and go beyond its taxing and spending powers in implementing the tax on carriages?</p><p>The Court held that the tax was legitimate. In one of the seriatim opinions (each justice writing for himself, there being no opinion of the Court as a whole) which constituted the holding, Justice Chase argued that an apportioned tax on carriages would lead to inequalities in the tax burden between states. Furthermore, he interpreted the terms "tax" and "duty" in Article I, Section 8 broadly, and concluded that the carriage tax was an indirect tax. Justice Iredell argued that to administer an apportioned tax on carriages would be "absurd," for if a state had no carriages it would be impossible to implement the tax. He concluded that if a tax could not be apportioned, then it was not a direct tax "in the sense of the constitution."</p> http://www.oyez.org/cases/1792-1850/1796/1796_2/ <p>Does the Treaty of Paris override an otherwise valid state law?</p><p>Four of the five justices wrote opinions. It was the practice of the day for the Court to issue opinions seriatim, or one after another. There was no "opinion for the Court." Collectively, the justices held that federal courts had the power to determine the constitutionality of state laws. They invalidated the Virginia law under the supremacy clause and, in the words of a distinguished scholar of the period, "established for all time [the Supreme Court's] power of judicial review of state laws."</p> http://www.oyez.org/cases/1792-1850/1796/1796_0/