Brown v. Maryland

Brown v. Maryland
Supreme Court of the United States
Decided March, 1827
Full case name	Brown v. State of Maryland
Citations	25 U.S. 419 (more) 12 Wheat. 419; 6 L. Ed. 678
Holding
Maryland’s tax on imports interferes with the federal government's control of commerce with foreign nations.
Court membership
Chief Justice John Marshall Associate Justices Bushrod Washington · William Johnson Gabriel Duvall · Joseph Story Smith Thompson · Robert Trimble
Case opinions
Majority	Marshall, joined by Washington, Duvall, Story, Johnson, Trimble
Dissent	Thompson
Laws applied
Import-Export Clause, Commerce Clause

Brown v. Maryland, 25 U.S. (12 Wheat.) 419 (1827), was a significant United States Supreme Court case which interpreted the Import-Export and Commerce Clauses of the U.S. Constitution to prohibit discriminatory taxation by states against imported items after importation, rather than only at the time of importation. 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. It was the first case in which the U.S. Supreme Court construed the Import-Export Clause.^[1] Chief Justice John Marshall delivered the opinion of the court, ruling that Maryland's statute violated the Import-Export and Commerce Clauses 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.^[2]