What is the effect of the Supreme Court case McCulloch v. Maryland?

It helped local governments use direct democracy

It denied states the right to control local governments.

It supported the strength of local government over states.

It legitimized the power of the national government over states.

It showed how the national government's power needs to be checked.

The conflict of the McCulloch v. Maryland case originated when James W. McCulloch, a cashier of the Baltimore branch of the Second Bank of the United States, refused to pay a tax imposed by the state of Maryland to the bank.

When the case went to the Supreme Court, the state of Maryland argued that as a sovereign state, it had the power to tax any business within its borders, including a national bank. However, the court determined two things: first, it established that to charter a bank was one of the implied powers of the government enunciated in Section 8 of Article I (this governmental power had been on debate during the hearings), and second, it determined that even though the states retained the power of taxation, federal laws were supreme and could not be controlled by the states, and this way, the case legitimized the power of the national government over states.