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Baltimore harbor, c. 1830. The Bettmann Archive
John Barren's profitable wharf in Baltimore Harbor was
being ruined because of excavation and street grading by the city
of Baltimore. Barren and his partner felt the city should pay for the
damage because the Fifth Amendment protected citizens from hav-
ing their property taken away without just compensation. But the
Supreme Court said the Bill of Rights did not apply to the states or
local government. This chapter explains how the Court came to
that conclusion, as well as the history of the framing of the Bill of
Rights. It also explains important judicial powers such as judicial
review and shows how Chief Justice John Marshall turned the
Supreme Court from a weak tribunal into the ultimate arbiter of
constitutional conflicts.
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