Last week, Stare DCisis explored what happens when the Supreme Court stops being polite, and starts getting real with states acting unconstitutionally. Virginia, in particular, was the perpetual thorn in the side of the early Supreme Court. Though Chief Justice John Marshall was a former Virginia legislator, the state’s supreme court had some real authority problems taking orders from Marshall once he moved across the river. It may seem patently obvious that the Supreme Court can tell the states what to do, but that wasn’t always so clear in those foggy days of the early 19th century. Like a headstrong adolescent, Virginia tried to test its boundaries at every turn.

In 1820, the Old Dominion enacted a law banning lotteries. At the time, lotteries were big business for the states. They had been imported as a means of raising development funds during the colonial period. Indeed, Virginia itself owes its founding to a British lottery conducted to raise money for the Jamestown Settlement. But Virginians, and eventually most Americans, became disenchanted with the secondary effects of lotteries — namely, greed, fraud and corruption. By the time of the Civil War, all but three states had prohibited lotteries.

In 1820, though, D.C. still had a lottery. And two brothers from Norfolk thought they could make some money off of it by selling D.C. lottery tickets in Virginia. Well, they thought wrong. They were convicted for violating the Virginia law. In the case Cohens v. Virginia, the Supreme Court upheld those convictions but handily struck down Virginia’s argument that the big shots in D.C. should mind their own business. “You federal, me state,” its lawyers argued, in short. Marshall responded with a swift clubbing.