Talk:Hepburn v. Griswold

SD
I nominated this for speedy deletion as it does not contain a year, location, venue, or any context which this can be expanded from. Stifle 16:52, 15 November 2005 (UTC)


 * The link to Salmon P. Chase is sufficient context in my view. -- RHaworth 21:00, 15 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I expanded the article quite a bit, including the year the opinion was announced, the case citation, and the procedural history. Ari 17:16, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Chase did not rule that the issuance of greenbacks was "unconstitutional"
"Salmon P. Chase, speaking for the Court, declared certain parts of the legal tender acts to be unconstitutional. This included the issuance of greenbacks,..."

This is either very unclear or inaccurate. to quote the original decision "It is certainly not the same power as the power to coin money. Nor is it in any reasonable or satisfactory sense an appropriate or plainly adapted means to the exercise of that power. Nor is there more reason for saying that it is implied in, or incidental to, the power to regulate the value of coined money of the United States, or of foreign coins. This power of regulation is a power to determine the weight, purity, form, impression, and denomination of the several coins, and their relation to each other, and the relations of foreign coins to the monetary unit of the United States

Nor is the power to make notes a legal tender the same as the power to issue notes to be used as currency. The old Congress, under the Articles of Confederation, was clothed by express grant with the power to emit bills of credit, which are in fact notes for circulation as currency; and yet that Congress was not clothed with the power to make these bills a legal tender in payment. And this court has recently held that the Congress, under the Constitution, possesses, as incidental to other powers, the same power as the old Congress to emit bills or notes; but it was expressly declared at the same time that this decision concluded nothing on the question of legal tender. Indeed, we are not aware that it has ever been claimed that the power to issue bills or notes has any identity with the power to make them a legal tender. On the contrary, the whole history of the country refutes that notion. The States have always been held to possess the power to authorize and regulate the issue of bills for circulation by banks or individuals, subject, as has been lately determined, to the control of Congress, for the purpose of establishing and securing a National currency; and yet the States are expressly prohibited by the Constitution from making anything but gold and silver coin a legal tender. This seems decisive on the point that the power to issue notes and the power to make them a legal tender are not the same power, and that they have no necessary connection with each other."

As should be obvious from the quote, the ruling was not that issuing greenbacks was unconstitutional but that making them a legal tender was. He further argues that the legal tender provision was unimportant to fighting the war because "All modern history testifies that, in time of war especially, when taxes are augmented, large loans negotiated, and heavy disbursements made, notes issued by the authority of the government, and made receivable for dues of the government, always obtain at first a ready circulation; and even when not redeemable in coin, on demand, are as little and usually less subject to depreciation than any other description of notes, for the redemption of which no better provision is made" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.237.84.114 (talk) 11:35, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

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