Chief Justice John Marshall ruled in "Gibbons v. Ogden" (1824) that the power to regulate interstate commerce also included the power to regulate interstate navigation: "Commerce, undoubtedly is traffic, but it is something more—it is intercourse... power to regulate navigation is as expressly granted, as if that term had been added to the word 'commerce'... [The power of Congress does not stop at the jurisdictional lines of the several states. It would be a very useless power if it could not pass those lines." The Court's decision contains language supporting one important line of Commerce Clause jurisprudence, the idea that the electoral process of representative government represents the primary limitation on the exercise of the Commerce Clause powers: