John Marshall

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• Born: 24 September 1755
• Birthplace: Fauquier County, Virginia
• Died: 6 July 1835
• Best Known As: Chief Justice of the United States, 1801-35

John Marshall was the fourth Chief Justice of the United States, appointed in 1801 by President John Adams. In the 34 years that Marshall presided over the Supreme Court, the federal powers of the judicial branch were defined and strengthened, most notably in the 1803 case of Marbury v. Madison, in which Marshall asserted the power of the court to overturn legislation deemed unconstitutional. Marshall grew up in Virginia and practiced law before getting involved in Federalist politics. Adams appointed him to be an envoy to France during the XYZ Affair (1797), then tried to appoint him to the court. Marshall refused and instead served in the House of Representatives (1799) before Adams named him secretary of state (1800) and then Chief Justice (1801). Politically, Marshall was famously at odds with his distant cousin, Thomas Jefferson, especially during the trial of Aaron Burr (1807), when the strength of the court was pitted against the strength of the executive branch. Burr, on trial for treason, was acquitted after Marshall ruled that two witnesses were needed prove the charge. Marshall's long term on the bench occurred at a time when the newly-formed nation was still taking shape, and he is considered one of the most influential jurists in U.S. history.

Marshall, who had been a captain in the Revolutionary War, authored a five-volume biography of George Washington, his commander at Valley Forge.

For more information on John Marshall, visit Britannica.com.

(b. Germantown [now Midland], Va., 24 Sept. 1755; d. Philadelphia, Pa., 6 July 1835; interred New Burying Ground, Richmond, Va.), chief justice, 1801–1835. By common acclaim, John Marshall is “the great Chief Justice,” the single best representative of American constitutional law. His greatness, as Oliver Wendell Holmes noted in 1901, consisted partly in his “being there” during the formative period of the Court's history. But Marshall's conservative‐national ideology fit the formative age perfectly, just as his personality and legal genius exactly suited the duties of chief justice.

President John Adams appointed Marshall to the Court on 20 January 1801, to save the Constitution from the Jeffersonian Republicans. The well‐settled values Marshall brought to his duties were the product of the revolutionary age as refracted through family and place. He was born and grew up in Fauquier County on the north‐western frontier of Virginia, the eldest of fifteen children. Frontier life imparted to Marshall an easygoing, democratic demeanor that was balanced by the conservative values of the privileged class to which he belonged. Marshall's marriage to Betsy Ambler in 1783 further consolidated his membership in polite society and gave him a useful entree into politics and law. They had ten children, six of whom lived to maturity.

The strong love of union that infused his jurisprudence was due mainly to his father's influence and his own experience in the Revolutionary War. Young Marshall received only two years of formal education. Beyond that, his father taught him rudimentary math, deepened his love of English literature, introduced him to black‐stone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765) and most importantly perhaps, kept him abreast of political developments in pre‐Revolutionary Virginia. Father and son were among the first to enlist. As an officer in the Culpepper Minutemen and later in the continental line, Marshall saw action at the battles of Great Bridge, Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth Courthouse. Wintering at Valley Forge instilled in him a lifelong hatred of state provincialism and feckless national government. While serving as deputy judge advocate, he met several members of General George Washington's staff who would later become champions of national union. Marshall's intense patriotism and admiration of Washington can be gleaned from his Life of George Washington (1805–1807).

Marshall resumed his legal studies in 1780 by briefly attending the law lectures of George Wythe at William and Mary. With little more formal training than that he began legal practice, first in Fauquier County and then in Richmond, where he settled with his wife and family. Neither as lawyer nor as judge was he inclined to blackletter scholarship. He did possess, however, in rare combination, those qualities essential to legal greatness: a capacious, retentive, and quick mind; sharp analytical skills; and a logical prose style that bordered on eloquence. He rose rapidly to the top of the highly competitive Richmond bar, specializing in noncriminal appellate cases. The staple of his practice was British debt cases, but he litigated a wide range of cases in law and equity in state and federal courts. His only case before the Supreme Court, which he lost, was Ware v. Hylton (1796), which, ironically, he argued on states' rights grounds.

To be a nationalist in Virginia was to be a Federalist and Marshall was both. Serving in Virginia's Council of State (1782–1784) and in the House of Delegates (1782, 1784–1785, 1787–1788, 1795) convinced him as it had James Madison that state legislators were parochial and incompetent. He made his debut as a nationalist in the Virginia ratifying convention of 1788, where he spoke effectively in defense of federal judicial authority. As a prominent Federalist, he defended Washington's foreign policy and Alexander Hamilton's domestic program. Proven ability, well‐placed connections, and service to party brought him offers to serve as U.S. attorney general, minister to France, and associate justice of the Supreme Court. He rejected these offers for financial reasons, but he did agree to serve on the so‐called XYZ mission to France, where he distinguished himself for his nationalism, his diplomatic skills, and the effectiveness of his written dispatches to President John Adams. At Washington's behest, he agreed to serve in Congress (1799–1800), where he became the leading spokesman for the moderate Federalism of President Adams. He served briefly but effectively as secretary of state before assuming his duties as chief justice on 5 March 1801.

As chief justice he immediately set out to strengthen the Court by unifying it—a chore made easier by the threats posed by President Thomas Jefferson and his party who controlled Congress. His most important innovation was to persuade his colleagues to abandon seriatim opinions, thus making it possible for the Court to speak authoritatively in a single voice. Most often in important constitutional questions that voice belonged to Marshall, who sensed intuitively that the function of the Court was to legitimate and educate a people as yet unschooled in constitutional law. His great opinions were expansive constitutional state papers written with grace, eloquence, and authority and rooted in the republican principles of a written and supreme Constitution emanating from a sovereign people.

His first great effort as spokesman for the whole Court was Marbury v. Madison (1803), which was the opening battle in the struggle for judicial review over acts of Congress. For a unanimous Court, Marshall ruled that section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 was void, so far as it extended original jurisdiction not authorized by Article III of the Constitution. Contrary to what is often written about the opinion, Marshall did not explicitly claim that the Court was the sole or final interpreter of the Constitution. In fact, not until Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) did the Court strike down another act of Congress. Marbury was not cited by the Supreme Court itself as the definitive statement on judicial review until the late nineteenth century. Marshall did, however, successfully nullify an act of Congress and in the process grounded judicial authority in the supremacy of a written constitution. By lecturing President Jefferson on the rule of law, he implicitly put forth the Court as the special guardian of that sacred republican principle. Given the political vulnerability of the Court, it was a brilliant victory and a timely one as well. But the real meaning of judicial review—as the power of the Court to expound the text of the Constitution as law—became clear only in cases like McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) where Marshall upheld the federal statute in question.

If McCulloch is the best example of Marshall's use of judicial review, Cohens v. Virginia (1821) was his most elaborate defense of it. The case arose when Virginia challenged the appellate authority of the Supreme Court under section 25 of the Judiciary Act of 1789, which gave the Court the right to review federal questions decided by state courts. Marshall's opinion demonstrated by logic and recourse to fundamental principles that the supremacy of the Constitution and the appellate authority of the Court are inseparable. By ruling that the Eleventh Amendment was no bar to appellate jurisdiction, he further limited that amendment as a states' rights curb on judicial authority (see State Sovereignty and States' Rights). The importance of Cohens is suggested by the fact that John C. Calhoun, who initially supported the decision, developed his theory of nullification in direct refutation of Marshall's argument.25

Another theme running through Marshall's constitutional opinions was vested rights. As an extensive land speculator he learned firsthand the Lockean principle that property and individual liberty were connected. Experience in state government taught him that the greatest threat to both was state legislation. Fletcher v. Peck (1810) gave him a chance to address that problem. The question was whether an act passed by the Georgia legislature in 1796 repealing a previous act selling state land to private speculators violated Article I, section 10, which prohibited states from passing laws impairing the obligation of contracts (see Contracts Clause). Georgia defended the repeal on the grounds that the original grant was induced by bribery and fraud—which it was. But if states could repeal their own grants, innocent buyers could lose their property and massive insecurity would be introduced into the land market. It was a judgment call for Marshall on constitutional as well as policy grounds, because available evidence pointed to the fact that Article I, section 10 seemed intended by the framers to apply to private contracts but not public contracts to which the state itself was a party. In voiding the Georgia rescinding act—the first time a state law had been held in violation of the Constitution—Marshall opted for property rights and market stability. He also chose the Lockean spirit of the age over the letter of the Constitution10

In Fletcher, Marshall made the Contracts Clause the constitutional shield of property rights against state action; in Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819) he closed the circle of protection. In 1816 New Hampshire altered the charter of Dartmouth College, in effect making the private college into a state university. The question was whether the Contracts Clause prevented it from doing so. Marshall ruled that state charters as well as state grants were contracts within the meaning of Article I, section 10. The state could not alter the terms of charters unless, as Justice Joseph Story pointed out in his concurrence, it had reserved the right to do so in the charter. The decision not only secured private education in America but also promoted the growth of business corporations by providing a stable climate for investment. Corporations, which had been justified because of their public function and which accordingly had been subject to state control, now became private entities protected by the Constitution.

The chief justice was less successful in his effort to prohibit state bankruptcy legislation via the Contracts Clause. The unsettled constitutional issue was whether the federal authority to pass uniform bankruptcy laws, granted in Article I, section 8, automatically prohibited state action and whether state authority, if it existed, was valid only when applied to future contracts. Marshall's opinion in Sturges v. Crowninshield (1819), which confronted the issue for the first time, struck down a New York bankruptcy law that applied to contracts made before the law was passed, but it did not resolve the questions of exclusivity and prospective contracts. When in Ogden v. Saunders (1827) the Court upheld a state bankruptcy law governing prospective contracts, Marshall entered a passionate dissent, denying the prospective‐retrospective distinction altogether. Scholars have concluded that the justices were badly divided in Sturges and that Marshall had fashioned his opinion to avoid an open split.8

Marshall's thinking about the relationship of law and capitalism was shaped by an age where agriculture and commerce dominated, where large‐scale manufacturing was in its infancy, and the business cycle yet unknown. Yet his view of law and economics was progressive as his quest for the creation of a national market in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) and Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) indicates. The former construed implied powers to uphold a congressional act creating the Second Bank of the United States; the latter's broad construction of the federal commerce clause prohibited states from passing laws interfering with interstate transportation and the free flow of goods across state lines (see Commerce Power). Taken with Marshall's effort in Fletcher and Dartmouth to provide a stable environment for investment in land and corporate stock, these opinions show the entrepreneurial cast of Marshall's jurisprudence. Jefferson and others accused him of having transformed the Constitution, yet Marshall followed the spirit if not the literal intent of the framers.

The central and most controversial theme in Marshall's decisions concerned federalism and involved the Court in the effort to brighten the line between state and nation that was so indistinctly drawn in the Constitution. All his leading constitutional opinions, except Marbury, address this issue, either directly or indirectly, and all of them curb state power: in Cohens he demolished state judicial claims of finality in constitutional cases; in Fletcher and Dartmouth, state legislatures were kept from repudiating their own grants and charters; in McCulloch states were prohibited from taxing federally chartered corporations; in Gibbons from interfering with interstate commerce. In the process of curbing the states, Marshall created a vast reservoir of congressional power. Thus in McCulloch he read the “necessary and proper” clause of Article I, section 8, so as to establish implied powers. By his expansive definition of the Commerce Clause in Gibbons, he established the principle that Congress was supreme within its enumerated powers (though he drew back from the proposition that the mere grant of a power to Congress excluded the states from acting). These opinions not only settled the constitutional question at hand but repudiated the emerging political doctrine of state sovereignty. Here Marshall emphasized the Federalist insistence that the people, not the states, were sovereign, that they established an enduring nation with all the powers necessary to nationhood, and that the Supreme Court was mandated by the people themselves to preserve those powers.

Because Marshall's opinions have been cited so frequently in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as justifications of federal power, it is tempting to conclude that he was the unrelenting consolidationist that southern states' rights critics accused him of being. In evaluating Marshall's jurisprudence, it must be remembered that the federal regulatory state was a century away. Congress did legislate on tariff, banking, public lands, and internal improvements, and Marshall's opinions authorized congressional action in these areas. But there was almost no federal regulatory legislation in his day. Measured by the governmental practice of his own age, Marshall's theoretical assertions of national authority came mainly as a response to states' rights radicals who wanted to undo the concessions to national authority that they believed had been unwisely agreed to in 1787.

Marshall's constitutional opinions taken as a whole stand as a comprehensive exposition of the Constitution on a par with the Federalist Papers, on which he drew heavily (see Federalist, The). Unlike those famous essays, however, Marshall's opinions were the law of the land. They were persuasive because they drew effectively on Revolutionary history, on the political theory of the founders, and on widely accepted sources of legal authority: natural law, the law of nations, and English common law. As befit a Court that was making precedents rather than following them, they were written in stately language that was logical, eloquent, and authoritative.

Indeed, because Marshall's constitutional opinions appear so authoritative, it is easy to overestimate their actual impact. In fact, they did not always control events or sometimes even the parties in the suit. Some of Marshall's contract decisions (e.g., New Jersey v. Wilson, 1812) went unenforced. Those in the Georgia Indian cases were resisted outright, with the support of the president. More threatening and disheartening to Marshall, however, was the fact that new appointments after 1823 brought states' rights ideology onto the bench itself. Beleaguered from outside by the rising tide of states' rights, challenged from the inside, Marshall was forced to retreat from his doctrinal preferences. In Willson v. Blackbird Creek Marsh Co. (1829), for example, Marshall drew back from the broad view of congressional power over interstate commerce set forth in Gibbons. In Providence Bank v. Billings (1830), he retreated from the spirit if not the letter of Dartmouth, ruling that the state's power to tax corporations cannot be restricted by implications from the charter but must be specifically stated. There is considerable evidence, too, that he resisted implied charter rights in the Charles River Bridge case (1837) when it was first argued in 1831.

Occasionally he was able to hold the line, as in his opinion in Craig v. Missouri (1830) where, in the old nationalist spirit, he invalidated a Missouri law that indirectly legalized state paper money. In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) and Worcester v. Georgia (1832) (see Cherokee Cases), he struck a blow against states' rights and Jacksonian democracy and for the Indians. But here, as in some of his contract cases, the Court's opponents had the final word. Ironically, Marshall's last constitutional opinion was Barron v. Baltimore (1833), which conceded control over civil liberties to the states by ruling that the Bill of Rights applied only to the federal government.

Where the chief justice stood on the slavery issue is not clear, since no legal challenge to the institution was presented him. As an officer in the American Colonization Society, he was in favor of gradual emancipation. But his support of the proslavery forces at the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1829–1830, his own experience as a small slaveholder, and his willingness to make pragmatic concessions to states' rights in the period after 1825 suggest that he would have been reluctant to unsettle the institution by judicial decision. It remained a possibility, however, and one readily perceived by Marshall's southern critics, that the broad power he gave Congress might do just that.

Marshall defined for all time the nature of the chief justiceship (see Chief Justice, Office of the), but his own role in the office varied according to circumstances. His greatest dominance came in the period from 1801 to 1811. From 1811 to 1823, during the Court's most stable and productive period, he increasingly shared power with strong‐minded colleagues like Joseph Story and William Johnson, sometimes compromising his doctrinal preferences to maintain unity. During his last decade on the Court, he further moderated his style of leadership to fit the new age and the new justices who represented it. He never surrendered his position as leader of the Court, however, even after the onset of illness in 1831. But neither, to his great distress, could he quell the “revolutionary spirit” on the Court, and he died fearing that both it and the Constitution were gone. Modest man that he was, it never occurred to him that he would become the symbol of the living Constitution and the personal embodiment of the Court he loved.

See also Judicial Power and Jurisdiction; Judicial Review.

Bibliography

• Albert J. Beveridge, The Life of John Marshall, 4 vols. (1916–1919).
• Robert K. Faulkner, The Jurisprudence of John Marshall (1968).
• George L. Haskins and Herbert A. Johnson, History of the Supreme Court of the United States, vol. 2, Foundations of Power: John Marshall, 1801–15 (1981).
• Charles F. Hobson, ed., The Papers of John Marshall, 6 vols. (1974–).
• G. Edward White, John Marshall and the Genesis of the Tradition, in his The American Judicial Tradition (1976).
• G. Edward White, History of the Supreme Court of the United States, vols. 3–4, The Marshall Court and Cultural Change, 1815–35 (1988)

— R. Kent Newmyer

As the fourth chief justice of the United States, John Marshall (1755-1835) was the principal architect in consolidating and defining the powers of the Supreme Court. Perhaps more than any other man he set the prevailing tone of American constitutional law.

The eldest of Thomas and Mary Marshall's 15 children, John Marshall was born on Sept. 24, 1755, near Germantown, Va. Frontier and family were the shaping forces of his youth. His mother came from the aristocratic Randolphs of "Turkey Island." His father - "the foundation of all my own success in life," recalled John Marshall - was a man of humble origin who, through native ability and strength of character, rose to relative prominence. Marshall's spare formal education consisted mainly of tutored lessons in the classics and Latin. His father saw to it, however, that John was solidly grounded in English literature and history; he also brought home practical lessons in politics from his service in the Virginia House of Burgesses during the years preceding the American Revolution.

Family unity, a tradition of learning, and a concern for affairs of the world shielded young Marshall from the barbarity of the frontier. But the West also left its mark - in a gaiety of heart, an open democratic demeanor, and a manliness of character that were no small part of Marshall's gift of leadership.

American Revolution

A dedicated patriot from the outset, Marshall saw action with the Culpepper Minutemen in 1775. As an officer in the Continental Line, he took part in several important battles and endured the hardships of Valley Forge. His experience, fortified by his association with George Washington and other nationalist leaders, left him with the passionate love of union and chronic distrust of state particularism that later became the twin pillars of his constitutional law.

Before Capt. Marshall was mustered out of the Army in 1781, he had decided on law as a profession. He heard George Wythe's law lectures at the College of William and Mary in 1780, and during that summer he was licensed to practice and that August was admitted to the county bar. During this same period Marshall fell in love with Mary Ambler. They were married in January 1783 and took up residence in Richmond, Va.

Early Political Career

Marshall's natural eloquence, charismatic personality, and rare gift for logical analysis overcame the deficiencies in his legal education. He rose quickly to the head of the Richmond bar. He also distinguished himself in state politics. He sat in the House of Burgesses (1782-1784, 1787-1791, and 1795-1797), where he consistently supported nationalist measures. He served on the important Committee on the Courts of Justice and when only 27 was elected by the legislature to the governor's Council of State.

Marshall's legislative experience confirmed his belief that the Articles of Confederation needed to be strengthened against the irresponsible and selfish forces of state power. As a delegate to the Virginia convention for the ratification of the Federal Constitution (1788), he put his nationalist ideas to use. Though somewhat overshadowed by established statesmen, he spoke influentially for ratification. And on the hotly debated subject of the Federal judiciary, he led the nationalist offensive.

Federalist orthodoxy and demonstrated ability soon won Marshall national prominence. During the crisis over the Jay Treaty in 1795, when party lines began to crystallize, Marshall supported Washington and Alexander Hamilton against the Jeffersonian Republicans. As a lawyer in the Supreme Court case of Ware v. Hylton (1796), he adhered to Federalist principles by arguing the supremacy of national law.

Marshall had turned down offers from President Washington to be attorney general and minister to France. In 1797 he agreed to serve on the "XYZ mission" to France. Shortly after his return, President John Adams offered him an appointment to the Supreme Court, but he declined. Elected to Congress in 1798, he soon became a leader of the Federalists in the House. Declining to serve as secretary of war, he accepted appointment in 1800 as secretary of state. Eight months later Adams appointed him chief justice of the Supreme Court, hoping to hold back the forces of states'-rights democracy, which in the form of the Jeffersonian Republicans had gained control of the Federal government.

Chief Justice

Marshall took his seat on the Court on March 5, 1801, and from that time until his death was absorbed in judicial duties. He did find time, however, to write a five-volume biography of George Washington (1804-1807) and to serve in the Virginia constitutional convention (1829-1830). But it was as chief justice that Marshall made his mark on American history. The pressing problem in 1801 was to unify and strengthen the Court. Accordingly he persuaded his colleagues to abandon the practice of delivering separate opinions and to permit him to write the opinion of the Court, which he did in the great majority of cases from 1801 to 1811. In addition, Marshall gave the Court a needed victory. His opinion in Marbury v. Madison (1803) for the first time declared an act of Congress unconstitutional, thus consolidating the Court's power of judicial review and providing future Courts with an elaborate defense of judicial power.

In United States v. Peters (1809) Marshall struck another blow for judicial power, this time against the claims of a state, by establishing the Court's right to be the final interpreter of Federal law. His opinion in Fletcher v. Peck held that the contract clause of the Constitution prevented state legislatures from repealing grants of land to private-interest groups. This was the first in a series of contract decisions that encouraged the growth of corporate capitalism. Few of Marshall's opinions touched civil rights; but in the Aaron Burr treason case, he struck a powerful blow for political freedom by defining treason narrowly and requiring strict proof for conviction.

Precedent-setting Cases

From the end of the War of 1812 through 1824 the Marshall Court was most creative. Marshall's position on the Court was less dominant than it had been before because able, new justices appeared. But he was unquestionably the guiding spirit and personally wrote opinions in the most important constitutional cases. Two such were McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) and Gibbons v. Ogden (1824). In the first case, Marshall upheld the congressional act chartering the Second Bank of the United States, thereby securing a national currency and credit structure for interstate capitalism. Also, by authorizing Congress to go beyond enumerated powers through a broad interpretation of the "necessary and proper" clause, he created a body of implied national powers.

Marshall's Gibbons opinion gave Congress supreme and comprehensive authority within the enumerated powers of Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution. The definition of commerce in the Gibbons case was sufficiently broad to bring the revolutionary developments in transportation and communication of the 20th century within the scope of congressional authority. These two cases created a reservoir of national power and guaranteed a flexible Constitution that could meet the nation's changing needs. That the Court should be the final interpreter of that flexible Constitution was the message of Marshall's compelling opinion in Cohens v. Virginia (1821).

Marshall's Concept of the Nation

Nationalist though he was, Marshall did not intend to destroy the states or establish the nation as an end in itself. He envisaged the national good as the sum of the productive individuals who constituted it, each pursuing his self-interest. Accordingly Marshall's opinions worked to release the creative energies of private enterprise and create a national arena for their operation. In Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819) Marshall ruled that a corporation charter was a contract within the meaning of the Constitution which the states could not impair. As a result, private educational institutions, along with hundreds of business corporations chartered by the states, were secured against state interference. The unleashed forces of commerce, Marshall believed, would transcend selfish provincialism and create a powerful, self-sufficient nation.

Aroused states'-rights pressures in the 1820s forced the Marshall Court to curtail its nationalism. In addition, new appointments to the Court allowed division and dissent to burst into the open. The chief justice did not surrender national principles - as evidenced in Brown v. Maryland (1827) and Worcester v. Georgia (1832) - and he continued to lead the Court, but the age of judicial creativity was temporarily over. With the election of President Andrew Jackson in 1828, Marshall became increasingly pessimistic.

Meanwhile the death of Marshall's wife left him disconsolate. And his own health began to fail, though he remained intellectually alert and continued performing his duties until his death on July 6, 1835.

Marshall died believing that the Constitution and the republic for which he had labored were gone, but history proved him wrong. The nation continued along the course of nationalism and capitalism that he had done so much to establish; the Court and the law continued to follow the lines he projected. His reputation as the "great chief justice" seems secure.

Further Reading

Albert J. Beveridge, The Life of John Marshall (4 vols., 1916-1919; rev. ed., 2 vols., 1947), despite its nationalist bias, remains the standard biography. Edward S. Corwin, John Marshall and the Constitution: A Chronicle of the Supreme Court (1919), concentrates on his judicial career.

James Bradley Thayer and others, John Marshall (1967), is a collection of classic essays. William M. Jones, ed., Chief Justice John Marshall: A Reappraisal (1956), is another collection of distinguished essays. The most exhaustive analysis of Marshall's judicial philosophy is Robert K. Faulkner, The Jurisprudence of John Marshall (1968). The relationship between the two giants of American constitutional development is examined in Samuel J. Konefsky, John Marshall and Alexander Hamilton: Architects of the American Constitution (1964). Standard constitutional histories, such as Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History (3 vols., 1923; rev. ed., 2 vols., 1926), and Charles G. Haines, The Role of the Supreme Court in American Government and Politics, 1789-1835 (1944), also contain material on Marshall's career. For further material the reader should consult James A. Servies, A Bibliography of John Marshall (1956), and numerous essays on him in historical and legal periodicals.

• Born: Sept. 24, 1755, Germantown, Va.
• Education: taught at home by his father and two clergymen; self-educated in law; attended one course on law, College of William and Mary, 1780
• Previous government service: Virginia House of Delegates, 1782–85, 1787–90, 1795–96; Executive Council of State, Virginia, 1782–84; recorder, Richmond City Hustings Court, Virginia, 1785–88; U.S. minister to France, 1797–98; Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788; U.S. representative from Virginia, 1799–1800; U.S. secretary of state, 1800–1801
• Appointed by President John Adams Jan. 20, 1801; replaced Oliver Ells-worth, who resigned
• Supreme Court term: confirmed by the Senate Jan. 27, 1801, by a voice vote; served until July 6, 1835
• Died: July 6, 1835, Philadelphia, Pa.

John Marshall was the fourth chief justice of the United States. From his time to ours, he has been called the Great Chief Justice.

Born and raised in the backcountry of Virginia, Marshall was educated mostly at home, with his father as the main teacher. His formal education in the law consisted of one course of lectures by George Wythe, a leading Virginia political leader and legal authority at the College of William and Mary. Marshall, however, had a keen mind that he filled with knowledge through a lifetime of reading, thinking, and interacting with political leaders in the public affairs of Virginia and the United States.

Participation in the American Revolution shaped John Marshall's lifetime loyalty to the United States. He later expressed this loyalty decisively during his tenure on the Supreme Court through opinions that reinforced the power and authority of the federal government over the states. He served in the Continental Army for nearly six years, fought in the battles of Great Bridge, Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth and spent the grueling winter with George Washington's forces at Valley Forge. He left the Continental Army in 1781 with the rank of captain. Marshall exhibited intense patriotism and had great admiration for George Washington, which he expressed later in his five-volume biography Life of George Washington, published in 1804–7.

President John Adams appointed Marshall to be chief justice in 1801 as one of his final actions before leaving office. Adams's first choice for the job was John Jay, who had been the first chief justice. Jay, however, declined because in his view, widely shared at the time, the Supreme Court was too weak and unimportant; he said that he would not be head of “a system so defective.” So John Marshall took the job that Jay refused and transformed it into the most powerful and prominent judicial position in the world.

Marshall brought unity and order to the Court by practically ending “seriatim” opinions (the writing of opinions by various justices). Before Chief Justice Marshall, the Court did not issue a single majority opinion. He, however, influenced the Court's majority to speak with one voice, through an opinion for the Court on each case before it. Of course, members of the Court occasionally wrote concurring or dissenting opinions, as they do today.

Often the Court's voice was John Marshall's. During his 34 years on the Court, the longest tenure of any chief justice, Marshall wrote 519 of the 1,100 opinions issued during that period, and he dissented only eight times.

Chief Justice Marshall's greatest opinions were masterworks of legal reasoning and graceful writing. They stand today as an authoritative commentary on the core principles of the U.S. Constitution.

Marshall's first great decision came in Marbury v. Madison (1803), in which he ruled that Section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 was void because it violated Article 3 of the Constitution. In this opinion, Marshall made a compelling argument for judicial review, the Court's power to decide whether an act of Congress violates the Constitution. If it does, Marshall wrote, then the legislative act contrary to the Constitution is unconstitutional, or illegal, and could not be enforced. Marshall wrote, “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is…. So if a law be in opposition to the constitution…the constitution and not such ordinary Act, must govern the case to which they both apply.”

In a series of great decisions, Marshall also established, beyond legal challenge, the Court's power of judicial review over acts of state government. In Fletcher v. Peck (1810), Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819), McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), and Cohens v. Virginia (1821), Marshall wrote for the Court that acts of state government in violation of federal statutes or the federal Constitution were unconstitutional or void.

The Marshall Court's decisions also defended the sanctity of contracts and private property rights against would-be violators in the cases of Fletcher v. Peck and Dartmouth College v. Woodward. In Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), Marshall broadly interpreted Congress's power to regulate commerce (Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution) and prohibited states from passing laws to interfere with the flow of goods and transportation across state lines.

Chief Justice Marshall's greatest opinions protected private property rights as a foundation of individual liberty. They also rejected claims of state sovereignty in favor of a federal Constitution based on the sovereignty of the people of the United States.

Finally, Marshall clearly and convincingly argued for the Constitution as a permanent supreme law that the Supreme Court was established to interpret and defend. “Ours is a Constitution,” Marshall wrote in 1819 (McCulloch v. Maryland), “intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs.”

Only through broad construction of the federal government's powers could the Constitution of 1787 be “adapted” to meet changing times. And only through strict limits on excessive use of the government's powers could the Constitution endure as a guardian of individual rights. The special duty of the Supreme Court, according to Marshall, was to make the difficult judgments, based on the Constitution, about when to impose limits or to permit broad exercise of the federal government's powers.

In 1833, near the end of John Marshall's career, his associate on the Supreme Court, Justice Joseph Story, wrote a “Dedication to John Marshall” that included these words of high praise: “Your expositions of constitutional law… constitute a monument of fame far beyond the ordinary memorials of political or military glory. They are destined to enlighten, instruct and convince future generations; and can scarcely perish but with the memory of the Constitution itself.” And so it has been, from Marshall's time until our own, that his judgments and commentaries on the Constitution have instructed and inspired Americans.

See also Cohens v. Virginia; Dartmouth College v. Woodward; Fletcher v. Peck; Judicial review; Marbury v. Madison; McCulloch v. Maryland

Sources

• Leonard Baker, John Marshall: A Life in Law (New York: Macmillan, 1974).
• Charles F. Hobson, The Great Chief Justice: John Marshall and the Rule of Law (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000).
• Herbert A. Johnson, The Chief Justiceship of John Marshall, 1801–1835 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998).
• Frances H. Rudko, John Marshall, Statesman, and Chief Justice (West-port, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1991).
• Francis N. Stites, John Marshall: Defender of the Constitution (Boston: Little, Brown, 1981).
• G. Edward White, The Marshall Court and Cultural Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991)

(1755-1835), chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Marshall, who had almost no formal schooling and studied law for only six weeks, nevertheless remains the only judge in American history whose distinction as a statesman derived almost entirely from his judicial career. Combat experience during the Revolution helped him develop a continental viewpoint. After admission to the bar in 1780, he entered the Virginia assembly and rose rapidly in state politics. He had good looks, a charismatic personality, and a debater's gifts. A Federalist in politics, he championed the Constitution in his state's ratification convention. Following a diplomatic mission to France, he won election to Congress, where he supported President John Adams. Adams appointed him secretary of state and in 1801 chief justice, a position he held until death.

John Jay, the first chief justice, who had resigned, described the Court as lacking "weight" and "respect." After Marshall no one could make that complaint. In 1801 he and his colleagues had to meet in a tiny room in the basement of the Capitol because the planners of Washington, D.C., had forgotten to provide space for the Supreme Court. Marshall made the Court a prestigious, coordinate branch of the government. In 1824 Senator Martin Van Buren, a political enemy, conceded that the Court attracted "idolatry" and its chief was admired "as the ablest Judge now sitting upon any judicial bench in the world."

During Marshall's thirty-four years as chief justice, he gave content to the Constitution's omissions, clarified its ambiguities, and added breathtaking sweep to the powers it conferred. He set the Court on a course for "ages to come" that would make the U.S. government supreme in the federal system and the Court the Constitution's expositor. He acted as if he were the enduring Framer whose constituency was the nation; he knew the true meaning of the Constitution and he meant it to prevail; he made his position a judicial pulpit to foster the Union of his dreams and to compete, if possible, with the political branches in shaping public opinion and national policy.

Marshall's judicial energies were as indefatigable as his vision was broad. Although he cast but a single vote and was eventually surrounded by colleagues appointed by a party he deplored, he dominated the Court as no one has since. He scrapped seriatim opinions in favor of a single "opinion of the Court" and during his long tenure wrote nearly half the Court's opinions in all fields of law and two-thirds of those involving constitutional questions. He exercised judicial review, firmly over state statutes and state courts, prudently over acts of Congress. Marbury v. Madison (1803) remains the fundamental case. Marshall read principles of vested rights into the contract clause and expanded the Court's jurisdiction. Notwithstanding judicial rhetoric conjuring up the bugles of Valley Forge, his judicial nationalism, which was real enough and helped emancipate American commerce in Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), sometimes constituted a guise to block regulatory state legislation that limited property rights. He linked the Constitution with national supremacy, capitalism, and judicial review.

Bibliography:

Leonard Baker, John Marshall: A Life in Law (1974); Albert J. Beveridge, The Life of John Marshall, 4 vols. (1916-1919).

Author:

Leonard W. Levy

See also Constitution; Federalist Party; Gibbons v. Ogden ; Marbury v. Madison ; Supreme Court.

A public official of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Marshall served as chief justice of the Supreme Court from 1801 to 1835. His interpretations of the Constitution in cases such as Marbury versus Madison served to strengthen the power of the Court and the power of the federal government generally.

John Marshall presided over the U.S. Supreme Court from 1801 to 1835. Appointed by President John Adams, Marshall assumed leadership during a pivotal era. The early nineteenth century saw tremendous political battles over the future of the United States and its Constitution, often with the Court at the center of controversy. By the force of personality, argument, and shrewdness, Marshall steered it through this rocky yet formative period. He weathered harsh criticism as the Court set important precedents that increased its power and defined its role in government. Historians credit him with establishing what has been called the American judicial tradition, in which the Supreme Court acts as an independent branch of government endowed with final authority over constitutional interpretation.

Marshall was born September 24, 1755, near Germantown (now Midland), Virginia. He was the son of Thomas Marshall, a wealthy landowner, justice of the peace, and sheriff. Like his father he fought in the Revolutionary War and married into a prominent family. His father's tutoring significantly enhanced his mere two years of formal education, which were augmented in 1780 by a brief attendance at lectures in law at the College of William and Mary.

Marshall was also influenced by George Washington. Because of his service to General Washington in the war, Marshall became a strong Federalist. He later wrote about his mentor in his book Life of George Washington (1805-7).

Marriage ties made Marshall a relative of a leading Virginia political family. This helped secure his place in society, paving the way for an early legal and political career in the 1780s. He specialized in appellate cases and quickly distinguished himself in the Virginia state bar. He also served in Virginia's council of state from 1782 to 1784, and in its house of delegates four times between 1782 and 1795. But it was as a partisan of the Federalists—the opponents of the states' rights-minded Republicans—that he came to wide acclaim. The struggle between the Federalists and the Jeffersonian Republicans was the most important political contest of the day. Marshall served as a devoted publicist and organizer for the Federalist cause in Virginia, and this work earned him various offers to serve as U.S. attorney general and as an associate justice of the Supreme Court. It also earned him the animosity of his distant cousin, Republican Thomas Jefferson, who soon became U.S. president and was his lifelong political adversary.

In 1798 Marshall agreed to serve Federalist president John Adams as one of three U.S. ministers to France during one of the Napoleonic Wars between France and Great Britain. In a scandal known as the XYZ Affair, the French foreign ministry attempted to solicit a bribe from the U.S. emissaries, and Marshall became a national hero for refusing. He quickly emerged as the leading spokesman for Federalism in Washington, D.C., as a member of Congress from 1799 to 1800 and briefly as secretary of state under Adams in 1800. Then Adams lost the 1800 presidential election to Jefferson, and the Republicans won control of Congress. In a desperate attempt to preserve the Federalists' power, Adams spent the remaining days of his administration making judicial appointments. Sixteen new positions for judges on federal circuit courts and dozens for justices of the peace in the District of Columbia were handed out during the final days of Adams's administration. These last-minute appointees came to be known as midnightjudges. One of these seats went to Marshall, who was appointed chief justice of the Supreme Court.

On March 4, 1801, Marshall assumed his duties as the head of the Court. Jefferson and the Republicans were furious over Adams's court stacking, and they swiftly quashed the appointments—except that, inexplicably, they did not challenge Marshall's. Marshall kept the Court out of the fray. He feared that in a conflict between the judiciary and the executivebranch, the Court would lose.

Marshall again faced political conflict when in 1803 the Court ruled on a case brought by William Marbury, whose appointment as a D.C. justice of thepeace had been one of those barred by the Republicans. Marshall's opinion for the unanimous Court in Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 2 L. Ed. 60, dismissed Marbury's suit on the ground that the Supreme Court lacked jurisdiction to rule on it. But at the same time, the Court restated the position that it had the power to rule on questions of constitutionality. By striking down a section of the Judiciary Act of 1789 (1 Stat. 73), Marshall's opinion marked the first time that the Court overturned an act of Congress. Not for more than fifty years would it exercise this power again. Marshall asserted the right of the Supreme Court to engage in judicial review of the law, writing, "It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is." Marbury was the crucial first step in the evolution of the Supreme Court's authority as it exists today.

Marshall emphasized the need to limit state power by asserting the primacy of the federal government over the states. In 1819, as Marshall reached the height of his influence, he cited the Contracts Clause of the U.S. Constitution (art.1, §10) as a basis for protecting corporate charters from state interference (Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 17 U.S. [4 Wheat.] 518, 4 L. Ed. 629). That year he also struck a blow to states' rights in McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316, 4 L. Ed. 579, where he noted that the Constitution is not a "splendid bauble" that states can abridge as they see fit. In 1821 he advanced the theory of judicial review, rejecting a challenge by the state of Virginia to the appellate authority of the Supreme Court (Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. [6 Wheat.] 264, 5 L. Ed. 257).

In his written opinions, Marshall typically relied on the power of logic and his own forceful eloquence, rather than citing law. This approach was noted by Associate Justice Joseph Story: "When I examine a question, I go from headland to headland, from case to case. Marshall has a compass, puts out to sea, and goes directly to the result."

Marshall was not without opponents. Foremost among them was Jefferson. In 1810 Jefferson wrote to President James Madison that "[t]he Chief Justice's leadership was marked by "cunning and sophistry" and displayed "rancourous hatred" of the democratic principles of the Republicans. Jefferson led the Republican attack on Marshall with the accusation that he twisted the law to suit his own biases.

Although Marshall weathered the attacks, his authority, and the Court's, was ultimately affected. Not all his decisions were enforced; some were openly resisted by the president. New appointments to the Court brought states' rights advocates onto the bench, and Marshall began to compromise as a leader and to make concessions to ideological opponents.

Marshall died in office on July 6, 1835.

Quotes:

"Listening well is as powerful a means of communication and influence as to talk well."

"The power to tax is the power to destroy."

"No political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of breaking down the lines which separate the States, and of compounding the American people into one common mass."

For other persons named John Marshall, see John Marshall (disambiguation).

John Marshall
4th Chief Justice of the United States
In office February 4, 1801 – July 6, 1835
Nominated by	John Adams
Preceded by	Oliver Ellsworth
Succeeded by	Roger B. Taney
4th United States Secretary of State
In office June 13, 1800 – March 13, 1801
President	John Adams
Preceded by	Timothy Pickering
Succeeded by	James Madison
U.S. Representative from Virginia
In office March 4, 1799 – June 7, 1800
Born	September 24, 1755(1755-09-24) Germantown, Colony of Virginia
Died	July 6, 1835 (aged 79) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
Political party	Federalist
Spouse(s)	Mary Willis Ambler
Profession	Lawyer, Judge
Religion	Episcopalian
Signature
Military service
Service/branch	Culpeper, Virginia Militia
Rank	Captain
Battles/wars	American Revolutionary War

John Marshall (September 24, 1755 – July 6, 1835) was an American statesman and jurist who shaped American constitutional law and made the Supreme Court a center of power. Marshall was Chief Justice of the United States, serving from February 4, 1801, until his death in 1835. He served in the United States House of Representatives from March 4, 1799, to June 7, 1800, and, under President John Adams, was Secretary of State from June 6, 1800, to March 4, 1801. Marshall was from the Commonwealth of Virginia and a leader of the Federalist Party.

The longest serving Chief Justice in Supreme Court history, Marshall dominated the Court for over three decades (a term outliving his own Federalist Party) and played a significant role in the development of the American legal system. Most notably, he established that the courts are entitled to exercise judicial review, the power to strike down laws that violate the Constitution. Thus, Marshall has been credited with cementing the position of the judiciary as an independent and influential branch of government. Furthermore, Marshall made several important decisions relating to Federalism, shaping the balance of power between the federal government and the states during the early years of the republic. In particular, he repeatedly confirmed the supremacy of federal law over state law and supported an expansive reading of the enumerated powers.

Contents 1 Early years 2 State political career 3 The Marshall Court from 1801 to 1835 4 Biography of Washington 5 Other work, later life, legacy 6 Monuments and memorials 7 Prominent family connections 8 Bibliography 8.1 Primary sources 9 Notes 10 References 11 Further reading 12 See also 13 External links

Early years

John Marshall was born in a log cabin near Germantown, a rural community on the Virginia frontier, in what is now Fauquier County near Midland, Virginia, to Thomas Marshall and Mary Randolph Keith. From a young age, he was noted for his good humor and black eyes, which were "strong and penetrating, beaming with intelligence and good nature".^[1] Marshall served in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War and was friends with George Washington. He served first as a Lieutenant in the Culpeper Minute Men from 1775 to 1776, then as a Lieutenant in the Eleventh Virginia Continental Regiment from 1776 to 1780.^[2] During his time in the army, he enjoyed running races with the other soldiers and was nicknamed "Silverheels" for the white heels his mother had sewn into his stockings.^[3] After his time in the Army, he read law under the famous Chancellor George Wythe in Williamsburg, Virginia at the College of William and Mary,^[4] was elected to Phi Beta Kappa^[5] and was admitted to the Bar in 1780.^[2] He was in private practice in Fauquier County, Virginia^[2] before entering politics.

State political career

In 1782 Marshall won a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates, in which he served until 1789 and again from 1795–1796. The Virginia General Assembly elected him to serve on the Council of State later in the same year. In 1785, Marshall took up the additional office of Recorder of the Richmond City Hustings Court.^[6]

In 1788, Marshall was selected as a delegate to the Virginia convention responsible for ratifying or rejecting the United States Constitution, which had been proposed by the Philadelphia Convention a year earlier. Together with James Madison and Edmund Randolph, Marshall led the fight for ratification. He was especially active in defense of Article III, which provides for the Federal judiciary.^[7] His most prominent opponent at the ratification convention was Anti-Federalist leader Patrick Henry. Ultimately, the convention approved the Constitution by a vote of 89-79. Marshall identified with the new Federalist Party (which supported a strong national government and commercial interests), rather than Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party (which advocated states' rights and idealized the yeoman farmer and the French Revolution).

Meanwhile, Marshall's private law practice continued to flourish. He successfully represented the heirs of Lord Fairfax in Hite v. Fairfax (1786), an important Virginia Supreme Court case involving a large tract of land in the Northern Neck of Virginia. In 1796, he appeared before the United States Supreme Court in another important case, Ware v. Hylton, a case involving the validity of a Virginia law providing for the confiscation of debts owed to British subjects. Marshall argued that the law was a legitimate exercise of the state's power; however, the Supreme Court ruled against him, holding that the Treaty of Paris required the collection of such debts.^[8]

In 1795, Marshall declined Washington's offer of Attorney General of the United States and, in 1796, declined to serve as minister to France. In 1797, he accepted when President John Adams appointed him to a three-member commission to represent the United States in France. (The other members of this commission were Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and Elbridge Gerry.) However, when the envoys arrived, the French refused to conduct diplomatic negotiations unless the United States paid enormous bribes. This diplomatic scandal became known as the XYZ Affair, inflaming anti-French opinion in the United States. Hostility increased even further when the Directoire expelled Marshall and Pinckney from France. Marshall's handling of the affair, as well as public resentment toward the French, made him popular with the American public when he returned to the United States.^[8]

In 1798, Marshall declined a Supreme Court appointment, recommending Bushrod Washington, who would later become one of Marshall's staunchest allies on the Court.^[9] In 1799, Marshall reluctantly ran for a seat in the United States House of Representatives. Although his congressional district (which included the city of Richmond) favored the Democratic-Republican Party, Marshall won the race, in part due to his conduct during the XYZ Affair and in part due to the support of Patrick Henry. His most notable speech was related to the case of Thomas Nash (alias Jonathan Robbins), whom the government had extradited to Great Britain on charges of murder. Marshall defended the government's actions, arguing that nothing in the Constitution prevents the United States from extraditing one of its citizens.^[10]

On May 7, 1799, President Adams nominated Congressman Marshall as Secretary of War. However, on May 12, Adams withdrew the nomination, instead naming him Secretary of State, as a replacement for Timothy Pickering. Confirmed by the United States Senate on May 13, Marshall took office on June 6, 1800. As Secretary of State, Marshall directed the negotiation of the Convention of 1800, which ended the Quasi-War with France and brought peace to the new nation.

The Marshall Court from 1801 to 1835

Marshall was thrust into the office of Chief Justice in the wake of the presidential election of 1800. With the Federalists soundly defeated and about to lose both the executive and legislative branches to Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans, President Adams and the lame duck Congress passed what came to be known as the Midnight Judges Act, which made sweeping changes to the federal judiciary, including a reduction in the number of Justices from six to five so as to deny Jefferson an appointment until two vacancies occurred.^[11] As the incumbent Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth was in poor health, Adams first offered the seat to ex-Chief Justice John Jay, who declined on the grounds that the Court lacked "energy, weight, and dignity."^[12] Jay's letter arrived on January 20, 1801, and as there was precious little time left, Adams nominated Marshall, who was with him at the time and able to accept immediately. The Senate at first delayed, hoping to Adams would make a different choice, but recanted "lest another not so qualified, and more disgusting to the Bench, should be substituted, and because it appeared that this gentleman was not privy to his own nomination".^[13] Marshall was confirmed by the Senate on January 27, 1801, and received his commission on January 31, 1801.^[2] While Marshall officially took office on February 4, at the request of the President he continued to serve as Secretary of State until Adams' term expired on March 4.

Soon after becoming Chief Justice, Marshall changed the manner in which the Supreme Court announced its decisions. Previously, each Justice would author a separate opinion (known as a seriatim opinion), as is still done in the 20th and 21st centuries in such jurisdictions as the United Kingdom and Australia. Under Marshall, however, the Supreme Court adopted the practice of handing down a single opinion of the Court. As Marshall was almost always the author of this opinion, he essentially became the Court's sole mouthpiece in important cases. His forceful personality allowed him to dominate his fellow Justices; only once did he find himself on the losing side. (The case of Ogden v. Saunders, in 1827, was the sole constitutional case in which he dissented from the majority.)^[9]

The first important case of Marshall's career was Marbury v. Madison (1803), in which the Supreme Court invalidated a provision of the Judiciary Act of 1789 on the grounds that it violated the Constitution by attempting to expand the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. Marbury was the first case in which the Supreme Court ruled an act of Congress unconstitutional; it firmly established the doctrine of judicial review. The Court's decision was opposed by President Thomas Jefferson, who lamented that this doctrine made the Constitution "a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please."^[14]

In 1807, he presided, with Judge Cyrus Griffin, at the great state trial of former Vice President Aaron Burr, who was charged with treason and misdemeanor. Prior to the trial, President Jefferson condemned Burr and strongly supported conviction. Marshall, however, narrowly construed the definition of treason provided in Article III of the Constitution; he noted that the prosecution had failed to prove that Burr had committed an "overt act," as the Constitution required. As a result, the jury acquitted the defendant, leading to increased animosity between the President and the Chief Justice.^[15]

During the 1810s and 1820s, Marshall made a series of decisions involving the balance of power between the federal government and the states, where he repeatedly affirmed federal supremacy. For example, he established in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) that states could not tax federal institutions and upheld congressional authority to create the Second Bank of the United States, even though the authority to do this was not expressly stated in the Constitution. Also, in Cohens v. Virginia (1821), he established that the Federal judiciary could hear appeals from decisions of state courts in criminal cases as well as the civil cases over which the court had asserted jurisdiction in Martin v. Hunter's Lessee (1816). Justices Bushrod Washington and Joseph Story proved to be his strongest allies in these cases, whereas Smith Thompson was a strong opponent to Marshall.

The text of the McCulloch v. Maryland decision, handed down March 6, 1819, as recorded in the minutes of the Supreme Court of the United States, in which the Court determined the separate states could not tax the federal government.

As the young nation was endangered by regional and local interests that often threatened to fracture its hard-fought unity, Marshall repeatedly interpreted the Constitution broadly so that the Federal Government had the power to become a respected and creative force guiding and encouraging the nation's growth. Thus, for all practical purposes, the Constitution in its most important aspects today is the Constitution as John Marshall interpreted it. As Chief Justice, he embodied the majesty of the judiciary of the government as fully as the President of the United States stood for the power of the Executive Branch.

Marshall wrote several important Supreme Court opinions, including:

• Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803)
• Fletcher v. Peck, 10 U.S. 87 (1810)
• McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316 (1819)
• Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 17 U.S. 518 (1819)
• Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. 264 (1821)
• Johnson v. M'Intosh, 21 U.S. 543 (1823)
• Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824)
• Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515 (1832)
• Barron v. Baltimore, 32 U.S. 243 (1833)

Marshall served as Chief Justice through all or part of six Presidential administrations (John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson), and remained a stalwart advocate of Federalism and a nemesis of the Jeffersonian school of government throughout its heyday. He participated in over 1000 decisions, writing 519 of the opinions himself.^[7]

He established the Supreme Court as the final authority on matters of constitutional law.^[16]

His impact "on American constitutional law is peerless" and the totality of his work on the court has been likened to his being the "Babe Ruth" of the Supreme Court. "As the single most important figure on constitutional law, Marshall's imprint can still be fathomed in the great issues of contemporary America."^[17]

Despite modesty and blandness, Marshall held strong views. He dominated the Court and "was personally responsible for elevating it to a position of real authority." Despite all that, he "often curbed" his personal opinions, preferring to arrive at decisions by consensus.^[18] He adjusted his role to accommodate other members of the court as they developed.^[19] His performance as chief justice established the paradigm for all chief justices who followed in his place.^[18][19]

President John Adams offered this appraisal of Marshall's impact: "My gift of John Marshall to the people of the United States was the proudest act of my life."^[20]

Biography of Washington

Marshall greatly admired George Washington, and wrote a highly influential biography. Between 1805 and 1807, he published a five-volume biography; his Life of Washington was based on records and papers provided him by the president's family. The first volume was reissued in 1824 separately as A History of the American Colonies. The work reflected Marshall's Federalist principles. His revised and condensed two-volume Life of Washington was published in 1832.^[21] Historians have often praised its accuracy and well-reasoned judgments, while noting his frequent paraphrases of published sources such as William Gordon's 1801 history of the Revolution and the British Annual Register.^[22]

Other work, later life, legacy

Marshall loved his home, built in 1790, in Richmond, Virginia,^[23] and spent as much time there as possible in quiet contentment.^[24][25] While in Richmond he attended St. John's Church in Church Hill until 1814 when he led the movement to hire Robert Mills as architect of Monumental Church, which commemorated the death of 72 Virginians. The Marshall family occupied pew No. 23 at Monumental Church and entertained the Marquis de Lafayette there during his visit to Richmond in 1824. For approximately three months each year, however, he would be away in Washington for the Court's annual term; he would also be away for several weeks to serve on the circuit court in Raleigh, North Carolina.

In 1823, he became first president of the Richmond branch of the American Colonization Society, which was dedicated to resettling freed American slaves in Liberia, on the West coast of Africa.

In 1828, he presided over a convention to promote internal improvements in Virginia.

In 1829, he was a delegate to the state constitutional convention, where he was again joined by fellow American statesman and loyal Virginians, James Madison and James Monroe, although all were quite old by that time. Marshall mainly spoke at this convention to promote the necessity of an independent judiciary.

On December 25, 1831, Mary, his beloved wife of some 49 years, died. Most who knew Marshall agreed that after Mary's death, he was never quite the same.

On returning from Washington in the spring of 1835, he suffered severe contusions resulting from an accident to the stage coach in which he was riding.^[26] His health, which had not been good for several years, now rapidly declined, and in June he journeyed to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for medical attendance. There he died on July 6, at the age of 79, having served as Chief Justice for over 34 years. He also was the last surviving member of John Adams's Cabinet and the second to last surviving Founding Father, the last being James Madison.

Two days before his death, he enjoined his friends to place only a plain slab over his and his wife's graves, and he wrote the simple inscription himself. His body, which was taken to Richmond, lies in Shockoe Hill Cemetery in a well kept grave.^[27]

JOHN MARSHALL
Son of Thomas and Mary Marshall
was born September 24 1755
Intermarried with Mary Willis Ambler
the 3rd of January 1783
Departed this life
the 6th day of July 1835.^[28]

Monuments and memorials

Marshall Memorial by William Wetmore Story

Marshall's home in Richmond, Virginia, has been preserved by APVA Preservation Virginia. It is considered to be an important landmark and museum, essential to an understanding of the Chief Justice's life and work.^[29] See, John Marshall House.

The United States Bar Association commissioned sculptor William Wetmore Story to execute the statue of Marshall that now stands sits inside the Supreme Court on the ground floor.^[30][31] Another casting of the statue is located at Constitution Ave. and 4th Street in Washington D.C. and a third on the grounds of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Story's father Joseph Story had served as an Associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court with Marshall. The statue was originally dedicated in 1884.^[32]

An engraved portrait of Marshall appears on U.S. paper money on the series 1890 and 1891 treasury notes. These rare notes are in great demand by note collectors today. Also, in 1914, an engraved portrait of Marshall was used as the central vignette on series 1914 $500 federal reserve notes. These notes are also quite scarce. Example of both notes are available for viewing on the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco website.^[33][34]

Having grown from a Reformed Church academy, Marshall College, named upon the death of Chief Justice John Marshall, officially opened in 1836 with a well-established reputation. After a merger with Franklin College in 1853, the school was renamed Franklin and Marshall College. The college went on to become one of the nation's foremost liberal arts colleges.

Four law schools and one University today bear his name: The Marshall-Wythe School of Law at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia; The Cleveland-Marshall College of Law in Cleveland, Ohio; John Marshall Law School in Atlanta, Georgia; and, The John Marshall Law School in Chicago, Illinois. The University that bears his name is Marshall University in Huntington West Virginia. Marshall County, Illinois, Marshall County, Indiana,Marshall County, Kentucky and Marshall County, West Virginia are also named in his honor. A number of high schools around the nation have also been named for him.

John Marshall's birthplace in Fauquier County is a park, the John Marshall Birthplace Park, and a marker can be seen on Route 28 noting this place and event.

Marshall, Michigan was named by town founders Sidney and George Ketchum in honor of the Chief Justice of the United States John Marshall from Virginia—whom they greatly admired. Occurring five years before Marshall's death, it was the first of dozens of communities and counties named for him.^[35] Marshalltown, Iowa was allegedly named for the Michigan city, but adopted its current name because there was already a Marshall, Iowa^[36]

John Marshall was an active Freemason and served as Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Prominent family connections

• Humphrey Marshall (1760 – July 3, 1841) -- a United States Senator from Kentucky -- is the first cousin and brother-in-law of the chief justice.
• Thomas Francis Marshall (June 7, 1801 – September 22, 1864) was a nineteenth century politician and lawyer who was elected U.S. Representative from Kentucky. He is a nephew of the Chief Justice.
• George Marshall (December 31, 1880 – October 16, 1959) was an American military leader, General of the U.S. Army, Chief of Staff of the Army, Secretary of State, and the third Secretary of Defense. He was the 'father' of the Marshall Plan, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He is a distant relative of the chief justice.
• Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) primary author of the U.S. Declaration of Independence and President of the United States. He is a distant cousin of Marshall on his mother's side.

Bibliography

• Baker, Leonard, (1974) John Marshall: A Life in Law (New York: Macmillan). KF8745 M3 B3.
• Beveridge, Albert J. The Life of John Marshall, in 4 volumes (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1919), winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Volume I, Volume II, Volume III and Volume IV at Internet Archive.
• Corwin, Edward W., (1919) John Marshall and the Constitution: A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Yale University Press, online Edition at Project Gutenberg
• Hobson, Charles. The Great Chief Justice: John Marshall and the Rule of Law (University Press of Kansas, 1996). ISBN 0700607889; ISBN 978-0700607884.
• Johnson, Herbert Alan, "John Marshall" in Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel, eds. The Justices of the United States Supreme Court: Their Lives and Major Opinions — Vol. 1 (1997) pp 180–200. ISBN 0-313-27932-2.
• Johnson, Herbert A. The Chief Justiceship of John Marshall from 1801 to 1835. University of South Carolina Press, 1998. 352 pp. ISBN 1570031215; ISBN 978-1570031212.
• Newmyer, R. Kent. John Marshall and the Heroic Age of the Supreme Court Louisiana State University Press, 2001. 511 pp.^[37] ISBN 0-8071-2701-9; ISBN 978-0-8071-2701-8.
• Newmyer, R. Kent, (1968) The Supreme Court under Marshall and Taney, University of Connecticut.
• Robarge, David. (2000) A Chief Justice's Progress: John Marshall from Revolutionary Virginia to the Supreme Court. (Westport, Conn.: [[Greenwood Press). 366 pp.] ISBN 9780313308581.
• Rudko, Frances H., (1991) John Marshall, Statesman, and Chief Justice (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press). ISBN 0-313-27932-2.
• Shevory, Thomas C.; John Marshall's Law: Interpretation, Ideology, and Interest Greenwood Press, 1994. ISBN 0-313-27932-2.
• Simon, James F. What Kind of Nation: Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and the Epic Struggle to Create a United States. Simon & Schuster, 2002. 348 pp ISBN 0684848716; ISBN 9780684848716.
• Smith, Jean Edward, (1996) John Marshall: Definer Of A Nation, Henry Holt and Company. 736 pp. ISBN 080501389X; ISBN 978-0805013894.
• Stites, Francis N., (1981) John Marshall: Defender of the Constitution (Boston: Little, Brown). ISBN 0673393534; ISBN 978-0673393531.
• White, Edward. The Marshall Court and Cultural Change, 1815-1835 Macmillan, 1988. 1009 pp; abridged ed. Oxford University Press, 1991. 864 pp. ISBN 0195070585; ISBN 978-0195070583

Primary sources

• Cotton, Joseph Peter, Jr., ed., (1905) Constitutional Decisions of John Marshall, (New York and London).
• Hobson, Charles F.; Perdue, Susan Holbrook; and Lovelace, Joan S., eds. The Papers of John Marshall published by University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture; the standard scholarly edition; most recent volume: Vol. 11: Correspondence, Papers, and Selected Judicial Opinions, April 1827–December 1830. (2002) ISBN 0815311761.
• Story, Joseph, ed., The Writings of John Marshall, late Chief Justice of the United States, upon the Federal Constitution, Boston, 1839 at Google books.

Notes

1. ^ Quoted in Baker (1972), p. 4 and Stites (1981), p. 7.
2. ^ ^{a b c d} John Marshall at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.
3. ^ Stites (1981), pp. 11-15.
4. ^ "Courthouse History, U.S. District Court, Washington, DC.". http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/marshall.html. 
5. ^ Supreme Court Justices Who Are Phi Beta Kappa Members, ‘’Phi Beta Kappa website’’, accessed Oct 4, 2009
6. ^ ""Marshall, John." Federal Judicial Center.". http://www.fjc.gov/servlet/tGetInfo?jid=1486. 
7. ^ ^{a b} "John Marshall" Encyclopædia Britannica, from Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2004 DVD. Copyright © 1994–2003 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. May 30, 2003
8. ^ ^{a b} "Marshall, John." (1888). Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography. New York: D. Appleton and Company.
9. ^ ^{a b} "Ariens, Michael. "John Marshall."". http://www.michaelariens.com/ConLaw/justices/marshallj.htm. 
10. ^ "Marshall, John." (1911) Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed. London: Cambridge University Press.
11. ^ Stites (1981), pp. 77-80.
12. ^ "Goldman, Jerry. "John Jay." OYEZ Project.". http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/legal_entity/1/biography. 
13. ^ Quoted in Stites (1981), p. 80.
14. ^ "Jefferson, Thomas. Letter to Spencer Roane.". http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_18s16.html. 
15. ^ "Linder, Doug. "The Treason Trial of Aaron Burr."". http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/burr/burraccount.html. 
16. ^ John Marshall at Supreme Court Historical Society.
17. ^ Oyez Project, Supreme Court media, John Marshall.
18. ^ ^{a b} Fox, John, Expanding Democracy, Biographies of the Robes, John Marshall. Public Broadcasting Service.
19. ^ ^{a b} Newmyer, R. Kent. John Marshall at Answers.com.
20. ^ The Marshall Court, 1801-1835, Supreme Court Historical Society.
21. ^ Marshall, John; Widger, David, Ed., Life of Washington (Document No. 28859 -- Release Date 2009-05-18) at Project Gutenberg.
22. ^ William A. Foran, "John Marshall as a Historian," American Historical Review, Vol. 43, No. 1 (October, 1937), pp. 51-64 in JSTOR
23. ^ "John Marshall House, Richmond, Virginia.". http://www.apva.org/marshall/. 
24. ^ "National Park Service, Marshall's Richmond home.". http://www.nps.gov/history/NR/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/49marshall/49marshall.htm. 
25. ^ National Park Service, "The Great Chief Justice" at Home, Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) lesson plan
26. ^ "Courthouse History, U.S. District Court, Washington, DC.". http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/marshall.html. 
27. ^ John Marshall at Find a Grave. See also, Christensen, George A. (2008) Here Lies the Supreme Court Revisited: Gravesites of the Justices. Supreme Court Historical Society. Journal of the Supreme Court, 33 Issue 1, Pages 17 - 41 (19 Feb 2008), University of Alabama.
28. ^ *John Marshall at Find a Grave
29. ^ National Park Service, "The Great Chief Justice" at Home, Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) lesson plan
30. ^ "Exercises at the ceremony of unveiling the statue of John by Morrison Remick Waite, William Henry Rawle, Philadelphia Bar Association - 1884 - Biography & Autobiography - 92 pp., pages 1, 3, 5 9, 23-29.". http://books.google.com/books?id=vc8EAAAAYAAJ&dq=John+Marshall+statue+United+States+Bar+Association&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=ngLFXm2Q-1&sig=CXodiQ_u6mQyKWmLGVunDeirJlI&hl=en&ei=zvzBSpX2LoLb8Qb0-uSIDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CA0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=falsepages. 
31. ^ "Courthouse History, U.S. District Court, Washington, DC.". http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/marshall.html. 
32. ^ "Exercises at the ceremony of unveiling the statue of John by Morrison Remick Waite, William Henry Rawle, Philadelphia Bar Association - 1884 - Biography & Autobiography - 92 pp., pages 1, 3, 5 9, 23-29.". http://books.google.com/books?id=vc8EAAAAYAAJ&dq=John+Marshall+statue+United+States+Bar+Association&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=ngLFXm2Q-1&sig=CXodiQ_u6mQyKWmLGVunDeirJlI&hl=en&ei=zvzBSpX2LoLb8Qb0-uSIDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CA0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=falsepages. 
33. ^ "Pictures of large size Federal Reserve Notes featuring John Marshall, provided by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.". http://www.frbsf.org/currency/stability/frnotes/710.html. 
34. ^ Pictures of US Treasury Notes featuring John Marshall, provided by theFederal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
35. ^ "City of Marshall, Michigan". http://216.120.158.100/community/profile.taf?_function=page&name=profile_history_body. 
36. ^ "Answers, source of Marshalltown name.". http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/273759. 
37. ^ "Online review, John Marshall and the Heroic Age of the Supreme Court.". http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=64131020447313. 

References

• Lossing, Benson John; William Barrit (December 21, 2005) [1855]. Our countrymen, or, Brief memoirs of eminent Americans. Illustrated by one hundred and three portraits. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Scholarly Publishing Office, University of Michigan Library. ISBN 1-4255-4394-4. 
• Smith, Jean Edward (March 15, 1998) [1996]. John Marshall: Definer Of A Nation (Reprint edition ed.). New York, NY: Owl Books. ISBN 0-8050-5510-X. 

• John Marshall at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress

Further reading

• Abraham, Henry J. (1992). Justices and Presidents: A Political History of Appointments to the Supreme Court (3rd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-506557-3. 
• Cushman, Clare (2001). The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated Biographies, 1789–1995 (2nd ed.). (Supreme Court Historical Society, Congressional Quarterly Books). ISBN 1568021267. 
• Frank, John P. (1995). Friedman, Leon; Israel, Fred L.. eds. The Justices of the United States Supreme Court: Their Lives and Major Opinions. Chelsea House Publishers. ISBN 0791013774. 
• Hall, Kermit L., ed (1992). The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195058356. 
• Martin, Fenton S.; Goehlert, Robert U. (1990). The U.S. Supreme Court: A Bibliography. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Books. ISBN 0871875543. 
• Urofsky, Melvin I. (1994). The Supreme Court Justices: A Biographical Dictionary. New York: Garland Publishing. p. 590. ISBN 0815311761. 

See also

Demographics of the Supreme Court of the United States List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States List of places and things named for John Marshall

List of United States Chief Justices by time in office List of U.S. Supreme Court Justices by time in office United States Supreme Court cases during the Marshall Court

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: John Marshall

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: John Marshall

Wikisource has original works written by or about: John Marshall

• Works by John Marshall at Project Gutenberg
  • The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) Commander in Chief of the American Forces During the War which Established the Independence of his Country and First President of the United States (English)
  • The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5)
  • The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5)
  • The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5)
  • The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5)
• Works by or about John Marshall in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Bennett, Georgia, John and Tom — Rivals in Everything, Richmond Times-Dispatch, February 10, 1935
• John Marshall Foundation.
• Location of Papers of John Marshall, Judicial manuscripts.
• National Park Service, "The Great Chief Justice" at Home, Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) lesson plan.

United States House of Representatives
Preceded by John Clopton	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Virginia's 13th congressional district 1799 – 1800	Succeeded by Littleton W. Tazewell
Political offices
Preceded by Timothy Pickering	United States Secretary of State Served under: John Adams 1800-1801	Succeeded by James Madison
Legal offices
Preceded by Oliver Ellsworth	Chief Justice of the United States 1801-1835	Succeeded by Roger B. Taney

v • d • e United States Secretaries of State Jefferson • Randolph • Pickering • J Marshall • Madison • Smith • Monroe • Adams • Clay • Van Buren • Livingston • McLane • Forsyth • Webster • Upshur • Calhoun • Buchanan • Clayton • Webster • Everett • Marcy • Cass • Black • Seward • Washburne • Fish • Evarts • Blaine • Frelinghuysen • Bayard • Blaine • Foster • Gresham • Olney • Sherman • Day • Hay • Root • Bacon • Knox • Bryan • Lansing • Colby • Hughes • Kellogg • Stimson • Hull • Stettinius • Byrnes • G Marshall • Acheson • Dulles • Herter • Rusk • Rogers • Kissinger • Vance • Muskie • Haig • Shultz • Baker • Eagleburger • Christopher • Albright • Powell • Rice • Clinton

v • d • e Chief Justices of the United States Jay • Rutledge • Ellsworth • Marshall • Taney • Chase • Waite • Fuller • White • Taft • Hughes • Stone • Vinson • Warren • Burger • Rehnquist • Roberts

v • d • e Cabinet of President John Adams (1797-1801) Vice President Thomas Jefferson (1797-1801) Secretary of State Timothy Pickering (1797-1800) • John Marshall (1800-1801) Secretary of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott, Jr. (1797-1801) • Samuel Dexter (1801) Secretary of War James McHenry (1796-1800) • Samuel Dexter (1800-1801) Attorney General Charles Lee (1797-1801) Secretary of the Navy Benjamin Stoddert (1798-1801)

Supreme Court of the United States

The Marshall Court Chief Justice: John Marshall (1801–1835) 1801–1804: Wm. Cushing | Wm. Paterson | S. Chase | B. Washington | A. Moore 1804–1806: Wm. Cushing | Wm. Paterson | S. Chase | B. Washington | Wm. Johnson 1807–1810: Wm. Cushing | S. Chase | B. Washington | Wm. Johnson | H.B. Livingston | Th. Todd 1810–1811: S. Chase | B. Washington | Wm. Johnson | H.B. Livingston | Th. Todd 1811–1812: B. Washington | Wm. Johnson | H.B. Livingston | Th. Todd | G. Duvall 1812–1823: B. Washington | Wm. Johnson | H.B. Livingston | Th. Todd | G. Duvall | J. Story 1823–1826: B. Washington | Wm. Johnson | Th. Todd | G. Duvall | J. Story | S. Thompson 1826–1828: B. Washington | Wm. Johnson | G. Duvall | J. Story | S. Thompson | R. Trimble 1828–1829: B. Washington | Wm. Johnson | G. Duvall | J. Story | S. Thompson 1830–1834: Wm. Johnson | G. Duvall | J. Story | S. Thompson | J. McLean | H. Baldwin 1835: G. Duvall | J. Story | S. Thompson | J. McLean | H. Baldwin | J.M. Wayne

Persondata
NAME	Marshall, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	United States federal judge
DATE OF BIRTH	September 24, 1755
PLACE OF BIRTH	Prince William County, Virginia
DATE OF DEATH	July 6, 1835
PLACE OF DEATH	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

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