Great Chief Justice Research Articles

The Switch to Black: Revisiting Early Supreme Court Robes

The Switch to Black: Revisiting Early Supreme Court Robes Matthew Hofstedt (bio) “Did they really wear robes like that?” is usually the first question a visitor to the Supreme Court Building asks when gazing upon the portrait of Chief Justice John Jay in an elaborate robe, black overflowing with red sleeves and stole trimmed with white. Jay strikes quite a contrast to the other portraits depicting justices in more solemn all-black robes now synonymous with American judges. The answer to the question is “Yes,” but the evidence surrounding Jay’s robe and the Supreme Court’s early attire is piecemeal and at times contradictory. Making things more confusing are the various historical accounts of the Court’s dress, based on little firsthand knowledge. These mostly undocumented accounts have led to a now generally accepted “fact” that the Court’s adoption of the all-black robes was due to the arrival of Chief Justice John Marshall in 1801. The story is that Marshall adopted the plain black robe on his first day with the Court to symbolize a new era. By adopting a more “republican” robe, Marshall was signaling a move away from the “aristocratic” colored robes worn by the other justices, which were seen by some as a symbol of the Federalist stance of the Court during the 1790s.1 The argument goes that the switch to black was one of the ways “the great Chief Justice” began to unify the Court, show judicial modesty, and form the Court’s new identity. Despite its appeal, there is little documentation to support this claim, and as will be explored, what evidence there is suggests the change occurred before Marshall became chief justice.2 What follows is an attempt to sort the facts from the fiction to come to a better understanding of the Court’s early judicial attire. Starting with the Jay robe and all of the myths surrounding it, this article will review the documentation that supports the use of the colorful robes by the early justices and add some new discoveries that perhaps narrow in on when the switch to black actually happened. While robes are admittedly a minor part of the Court’s history, they are one of the few pieces of material culture created specifically for the justices. [End Page 13] Click for larger view View full resolution Chief Justice Taft declined the Jay family’s offer to lend Chief Justice Jay’s robe to the Supreme Court. Instead, it was loaned to the Smithsonian until the family donated it to the National Museum of American History in 1973. The Court’s eventual move to the black robe would influence the visual representation of judges throughout the United States to the present day. The John Jay Robe The story of the Supreme Court’s early attire begins with the robe seen in perhaps the most widely known portrait of a Supreme Court justice: Gilbert Stuart’s Chief Justice John Jay.3 While many have wondered if this was indeed a judicial robe, the Jay Family understood it to be so. In August 1794, Sarah Jay wrote to her husband about Stuart’s progress on the portrait, noting that their nephew, likely Peter Jay Munro, was modeling the robe for the artist. “It is your very self,” she wrote, “it is an inimitable picture & I am all impatience to have it to myself.” Stuart had painted portraits of Jay earlier in London, but upon returning to New York, the Chief Justice only had time to sit for the head of this portrait. Stuart delivered the portrait to Mrs. Jay on November 15, 1794, and she immediately hung it in the family’s home.4 In 1808, Jay gave the portrait to his son, Peter A. Jay, who added this postscript in a letter to his father, “I have put up your portrait by Stuart which you were so kind to give me. It is an excellent likeness but the unfinished state of the Drapery makes it look ill & I wish to have that part completed by some other painter. For that purpose, I will be obliged to you, if you will be so good, as to bring...

Supreme Injustice: Slavery in the Nation's Highest Court by Paul Finkelman

Reviewed by: Supreme Injustice: Slavery in the Nation's Highest Court by Paul Finkelman Andrew T. Fede (bio) Supreme Injustice: Slavery in the Nation's Highest Court. By Paul Finkelman. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018. Pp. 273. $35.00 cloth) Paul Finkelman—one of United States slavery law's leading scholars—evaluates the lives and jurisprudence of three antebellum Supreme Court Justices, Chief Justices John Marshall and Roger B. Taney and Associate Justice Joseph Story. He concludes that these leading jurists, unlike some of their contemporaries, failed to "read the Constitution with an eye toward liberty" and thus failed to prevent slavery's expansion, failed to suppress the African slave trade, and failed "to protect free Blacks." All three instead "leaned toward slavery and discrimination—and, in doing so, were supremely unjust." (p. 10). Finkelman first analyzes the United States Constitution's provisions that protected the enslavers' interests. Direct protections included the fugitive slave clause. Indirect protections incorporated the two provisions authorizing the national government to suppress insurrections and domestic violence, which Finkelman notes included "slave rebellions." (p. 17). Although endorsing William Lloyd Garrison's interpretation of the Constitution as a pro-slavery document, Finkelman sketches alternative arguments that judges could have used "to expand freedom, sometimes protect Black liberty, and even hem in slavery," if the Court had not been "a constant friend of slavery and almost never a friend of liberty." (pp. 21, 25). Finkelman's two chapters on Marshall express his disappointment with this great chief justice who, instead of employing his celebrated [End Page 351] judicial skill and creativity to advance liberty over enslavement, favored enslavers' property rights over liberty. Finkelman suggests that one reason may lie in his newly discovered evidence demonstrating that biographers have understated both the extent of Marshall's slaveholding and his involvement in the buying and selling of enslaved people. Although the Marshall court ruled in favor of claims to freedom in five of fourteen cases, Finkelman notes that Marshall wrote opinions only in cases in which enslaved litigants lost their appeals. Similarly, when this court enforced the federal African slave trade prohibitions, Finkelman states that Marshall never wrote an opinion punishing slave traders. Thus, Marshall's slavery law opinions were "as we might expect from a slaveholding Virginian." (p. 108). Finkelman's chapter on Story expresses possibly even greater disappointment because Story came to the Supreme Court "with a New Englander's hostility to slavery." (p. 112). This frustration reaches its apex in Finkelman's discussion of Story's opinion in Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842), which enforced the fugitive slave clause. Finkelman rejects the notion that Prigg was a "triumph of freedom" and denounces this decision as "a triumph of slavery and a disaster for free Blacks, and the author of the opinion knew this." (p. 168). He attributes Story's insensitivity to this decision's effect on the rights of those who were allegedly escaped slaves to his "profound constitutional nationalism and his fear of southern nullificationists." (p. 169). Taney's infamous opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) is at the center of Finkelman's fifth chapter tellingly titled: "Roger B. Taney: Slavery's Great Chief Justice." (p. 172). Finkelman demonstrates how Taney foreshadowed at least in part his Dred Scott opinion in both his pre-court career and his earlier Supreme Court opinions. He also discusses the decision's effect on Taney's standing in the decision's immediate aftermath, in the Progressive and New Deal eras, and even today. Finkelman reconciles Taney's jurisdictional flip-flops between "states' rights and federal supremacy" by describing Taney's "larger jurisprudential goal of protecting slavery and the South whenever he could" (p. 212). [End Page 352] Supreme Injustice is part of a necessary and ongoing reconsideration of these and other pre-Civil War jurists' contributions to slavery law, which is an essential component of an understanding of slavery's place in the nation's legal, social, economic, political, intellectual, and religious history. Andrew T. Fede ANDREW T. FEDE is a lawyer in Hackensack, New Jersey, and an adjunct professor at Montclair State University, Upper Montclair. He is the author of three books on slavery law and many articles and...

Introduction

Introduction MELVIN I. UROFSKY It is always our aim to provide our readers with a rich diversity of materials on the history of our nation's highest court, but I think this issue is one of the most diverse in my quarter-century as editor of the Journal. We have articles on legal strategy, the con­ stitutional validation of the Union victory in the Civil War, the maneuverings that took a little-known lawyer from the heartland to the Supreme Court, the end of one of the most important eras in the Court's history, and how environmental concerns made their way into the volumes of U.S. Reports. John Marshall, the great Chief Justice, is always ranked as one of the three most important persons to have sat on the high court, along with Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and Louis Dembitz Brandeis. Scholars, myself included, consider the decisions handed down by Marshall in his thirty-four years on the bench to be the building blocks of our constitutional structure. Yet if one looks closely, the really important decisions took place in his first two decades, and of the opinions in his last years, the Cherokee cases stand almost alone. Professor William Da­ venport Mercer of the University of Ten­ nessee suggests that if we look closely at the last years of the Marshall Court, we will see that circumstances—both of a personal and political nature—had changed dramatically from the heyday of McCulloch and Gibbons. Two years ago the Society sponsored a lecture series on “Presidents and Their Cabinets,” and due to a variety of circum­ stances, we were unable to print all of the lectures in the same issue. We now have the last of those lectures, the one on Salmon P. Chase, who served as Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury, and then became Chief Justice to succeed Roger Taney. Professor Cynthia L. Nieoletti of the University of Virginia Law School reminds us that Chase's famous comment, that “the Con­ stitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union, composed of in­ destructible states,” which is now accepted as a foundational constitutional tenet, was not always so, especially in the years before Texas v. White (1869). In the history of the First Amendment's Speech Clause, most historians see the in­ famous case of Dennis v. United States (1951) as an unfortunate stumble by the Court on the road from Abrams v. United States (1919) to Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969). In fact, the Court reversed itself in just six years in the Yates case. Why and 134 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY how this volte-face came about has been at­ tributed to a number of causes—changes in the political environment and personnel changes on the bench being the two most common reasons given. Hayden Thorne, a doctoral student at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, suggests another reason: a significant shift in legal strategy, which appealed to the sitting judges in both the trial and appellate courts far more than the effort of the Dennis attorneys to make it a political trial. For environmentalists, no member of the Supreme Court is held in higher esteem than William O. Douglas, who made pro­ tecting our natural resources his chief ex­ trajudicial activity. Many legal scholars mocked him when in dissent he suggested that trees and rivers ought to have legal standing so that they could challenge the depredations visited upon them by devel­ opers. Although trees may not yet have standing, the courts have proven more friendly to groups like the Sierra Club who, in a way, speak for the trees. The Hon. M. Margaret McKeown, a judge on the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, takes a fresh look at the case that included the Douglas dissent, Sierra Club v. Morton (1972), and has come up with new and interesting findings. A number of years ago I had the priv­ ilege of interviewing Justice Harry A. Blackmun, and he rather self-deprecatingly referred to himself as “old number three,” meaning that he had been Richard Nixon's third choice to replace Abe Fortas, after the Senate turned down his first two...

Introduction

Introduction Melvin I. Urofsky As all of you who have been following the news—whether in old-fashioned news­ papers (as I do) or on some electronic device —know, many colleges founded before the Civil War, such as Harvard and Georgetown, or even afterwards, such as Washington and Lee, have been reexamining the role of slavery in their early history. It is not that these schools have been unaware that slavery played a part—historians have long known that the value of chattel slaves funded many things other than the plantations south of Mason and Dixon’s line. Rather, it is the demand from students that universities openly face up to these facts and, if possible, do something to atone for it, that is driving schools to take a look into the darker recesses of their past. This is the context in which Paul Finkelman’s new book, Supreme Injustice, arrives. Now the president ofGratz College in Philadelphia, Paul has long been one of the leading historians of slavery, especially the role it has played in the American court system. In his new book, he examines the role ofthe three most important Justices that sat on the high court in the years before the Civil War—Chief Justice John Marshall, Justice Joseph Story, and ChiefJustice Roger Taney. What is the newest, and perhaps most startling part of this book, is the extent to which Marshall, the Great Chief Justice, owned and sold slaves. Because of the importance of these findings, as well as Finkelman’s argument that the three men could have changed the Court’s slavery jurisprudence, you will find two reviews of his work in this issue. First, Grier Stephenson looks at the entire book and the treatment of all three Justices in his “Judicial Bookshelf.” Because Finkelman’s findings about John Marshall are so new and surprising, we invited Charles Hobson, the editor ofthe John Marshall Papers, to look in particular at the chapter dealing with Mar­ shall. We have also invited Dr. Finkelman to respond in the next issue if he chooses to do so. In most histories of American jurispru­ dence, including mine, the place we usually start is at Runnymede with King John signing the Magna Carta. The reason is simple— 207 208 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY Magna Carta started what will be called the “British Constitution,” which in fact is not a single document, but a series of laws passed during the ensuing centuries. When the U.S. Supreme Court first began hearing cases, there were many references to English law— after all, that was basically the only law those early Justices knew. Over the decades, as we built up our own body oflaw, one might have expected that there would be fewer references to the British Constitution and especially to Magna Carta. Derek A. Webb, former Supreme Court Fellow and associate in the Supreme Court and Appellate and Commercial Litigation and Disputes practice groups at the law firm Sidley Austin, however, suggests that Magna Carta has played a far larger role in Supreme Court cases than previously expected, and that role has continued right down to the present. There has always been some debate over exactly what the barons at Runnymede meant by “due process of law,” a debate that has been going on in American courts for decades. On the 800th anniversary of the Great Charter in 2015, Justices Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer took opposite sides in a case, with both of them citing Magna Carta as justification. Mr. Webb lists the cases and I think you will agree that we did not expect that many. I have mentioned a number of times that the field of constitution history is not a large one, and I have always been happy to be part of a discipline where most of us know each other. The article by Adam Winkler is another example of what my son has called “dealing with the usual suspects.” During several periods in American history there has been criticism of the courts, and especially of the high court, for its treatment of corporations, and especially of ascribing rights to them normally associated with natural persons. Adam...

Political Voice

Political Voice

A Man for All Seasons: Historical Memory and John Marshall

The heroes of American politics are often represented as timeless figures, sometimes literally carved in stone. A growing literature on collective memory, however, has emphasized the ways in which historical reputations are socially constructed—and reconstructed—over time. This article considers Chief Justice John Marshall as a case study in this dynamic process of constructing historical reputation. Marshall stands above all others as “the great chief justice,” but nonetheless his reputation has not always been secure. Surveying both citations to Marshall’s key opinions and popular and scholarly discussions of the chief justice himself across time, the article shows how Marshall’s reputation has been remade over time to fit the political needs of the moment. Marshall’s durability as a historical figure has turned not on a single set of particularly timeless accomplishments but on the diversity of his contributions to the constitutional canon.

Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall: What Kind of Constitution Shall We Have?

Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall: What Kind of Constitution Shall We Have? MELVIN I. UROFSKY Although they were third cousins once removed—both descended from William Randolph of Turkey Island, one of the first settlers in Virginia—John Marshall and Thomas Jefferson had little familial affection for one another. During the disputed contest of 1800, the future Chief Justice felt “almost insuperable objection” to the man who eventually become the third President, declaring him “totally unfit for the chiefmagistracy ofa nation which cannot indulge these prejudices without sustaining deep personal injury.”1 For his part, Jefferson reciprocated, and his cousin became the embodiment ofall he despised in thejudiciary. He wrote ofMarshall as a man of “lax lounging manners... and a profound hypocrisy.”2 But while theirpersonal antagonisms may be amusing, it is far more important from our point of view to see their repeated clashes as part of an ongoing public debate over the fu­ ture of the United States and how it would be governed under the Constitution. Thomas Jefferson, the great apostle of revolution and civil liberties, never overcame his dread of centralized government. John Marshall, the “great Chief Justice,” never overcame the re­ vulsion that he and others, such as his idol, George Washington, felt at the breakdown of government in the mid-1780s. This debate, at its core, asked what kind of nation we would be. This article proposes to look at some of the friction points between the two men in terms oftheir constitutional meaning. Central to their debate was the role of the judiciary in a constitutional government.3 Jefferson openly declared that “the great object of my fear is the federal judiciary... Let the eye of vigi­ lance never be closed [against it].” Marshall, in decrying what he perceived as Jefferson’s demagoguery, noted that “he looks, of course, with ill will at an independent judiciary.”4 I suggest we start with two debates that took place in President Washington’s first term, not between Jefferson and Marshall, but be­ tween Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. This 110 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY Although he was a third cousin once removed of John Marshall, Thomas Jefferson (pictured) considered the Chief Justice unfit for the judiciary and wrote of his “lax lounging manners.” is where conflicting visions first evidenced themselves, and, as many commentators have suggested, Marshall’s magisterial opinion in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)5 is a compan­ ion piece to Hamilton’s state paper on the bank of the United States. * * * The major problems confronting the new government under the Constitution involved money. The Confederation had left a mountain of debt—a staggering $50 million—an empty treasury, and no revenue measures in place. The Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, proposed a four-part program: fed­ eral assumption of the states’ debts; refund­ ing of both the federal and state debt at par; a tariff the revenue from which would be de­ voted solely to the payment of this debt; and a federally chartered but privately owned bank to help manage the government’s financial af­ fairs. Jefferson was willing to go along with the first three parts, but at a price; that is why the national capital is now on the Potomac rather than the Hudson or the Delaware. But he objected strenuously to the bank, and when Washington sought the advice of his cabinet, his Secretary of State argued that the proper construction of the Constitution would not al­ low Congress to establish a bank. According to Jefferson, “where a phrase will bear either oftwo meanings, [one should] give it that which will allow some meaning to the other parts of the instrument, and not that which would render all the others useless.” As for the Necessary and Proper Clause, it did not intend to give Congress a free hand. The Con­ stitutional Convention, he claimed, had not in­ tended to give Congress broad powers, but to “lace them up straightly within the enumer­ ated powers.”6 In other words, the federal gov­ ernment had extremely limited powers—only those specifically listed—and the Constitution should not be interpreted to allow Congress to detract from the powers of the other...

If History Mattered: John Marshall and Reframing the Constitution

What more can there be to learn about John Marshall? We have been blessed recently with a flood of fine books about Marshall and the Supreme Court over which he presided from 1801 until 1835.1 We also now have readily available an impressive collection of documents concerning the Court before Marshall, as well as a fine series collecting, introducing, and annotating Marshall's papers. With recent bicentennial celebrations marking the beginning of Marshall's career as Chief Justice and the anniversary of Marbury v. Madison, 3 an outpouring of law review articles and scholarly symposia have offered learned exchanges about the great Chief Justice and his most famous decision.' It turns out, however, that Kent Newmyer's5 account of John Marshall and his times actually illuminates a vigorous current debate. We are witnessing a bitter fight within the Supreme Court over federalism, the relative weight to give constitutional text, and the basic

Before Marbury : Hylton v. United States and the Origins of Judicial Review

Marbury v. Madison, decided in 1803, is famous for being the first case in which the Supreme Court asserted its power of judicial review. The typical American history textbook includes at least a few lines about how the Court, under the “Great Chief Justice,” John Marshall, struck down part of the Judiciary Act of 1789 and claimed its authority to stand as the ultimate guardian of the Constitution.

William Howard Taft and the Importance of Unanimity

William Howard Taft and the Importance of Unanimity* SANDRA DAY O’CONNOR This Term, the Historical Society has put on a wonderful series about the man who is widely—and rightly—regarded as this Court’s greatest Chief Justice. Through his recognition ofthe right ofjudicial review, John Marshall secured for this Court a role in shaping the nation’s most important principles: racial equality, individual liberty, the meaning of democracy, and so many others. Learning more about John Marshall this Term has caused me to think about another great Chief Justice, who perhaps deserves al­ most as much credit as Marshall forthe Court’s modern-day role, but does not often receive the recognition: William Howard Taft. Taft, of course, was remarkable even before he became ChiefJustice—but even the presidency did not hold as much charm for Taft as did his eventual position on the Court. Mrs. Taft noted in her memoirs that “[NJever did he cease to regard a Supreme Court appointment as vastly more desirable than the Presidency.”1 Mrs. Taft, however, disagreed. She loved being First Lady, and was a good one, at that. She was responsible for bringing the cherry blossoms to Washington, a feat for which I am particularly grateful. She also made a bit of history on March 4,1909 by becoming the first First Lady to accompany her husband from the Capitol to the White House on Inauguration Day.2 She was a difficult woman to refuse. Taft, on the other hand, was an unpop­ ular President. His bid for re-election was so unsuccessful that he himself described his defeat as “not only a landslide but a tidal wave and holocaust all rolled into one general cataclysm.”3 Despite his failures as President, however, as chief executive of the Court Taft could only be considered a success. When he took over the job, he found a federal system overwhelmed with cases, causing the Supreme Court’s docket to be as much as five years be­ hind and placing the other federal courts in similarly dire straits.4 Taft, with his experi­ ence as an executive and his connections on Capitol Hill, succeeded in securing the ap­ pointment of twenty-four additional federal judges.5 He also founded the predecessor to the Judicial Conference of the United States, 158 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY Helen Taft (pictured with her husband and son) be­ came the first First Lady to accompany her hus­ band from the Capitol to the White House on In­ auguration Day. She pre­ ferred being the wife of a President to being that of a Chief Justice. thejob ofwhich it became to keep statistics on the work of federal courts and to suggest re­ forms to keep the federal system functioning smoothly.6 Taft lessened the load on the Supreme Court by successfully lobbying Congress to pass a statute that would give the Court greater control over its own docket by substituting discretionary certiorari review for much of what had previously been mandatory appel­ late jurisdiction.7 But Taft’s concern for the Court went beyond simple efficiency: he had a vision of the Court much grander than that ofa court of error securing justice for individ­ ual litigants. As Taft saw it, individual litigants received all the justice they required through the federal district courts and courts of ap­ peals. The Supreme Court’s role was only “to maintain uniformity ofdecision forthe various courts ofappeal, [and] topass on constitutional and other important questions.”8 Control over its own docket allowed the Court to pass over ordinary lawsuits and spend more time on these sorts of questions. In keeping with his vision of the Court as a player in issues of national importance, Taft also lobbied Congress to appropriate funds to build the present Supreme Court Building, a building whose grandeur matched Taft’s sense of the significance of the business conducted therein.9 Chief Justices Taft and Marshall also placed great value on keeping the Courts over which they presided unanimous. John Marshall began his Chief Justiceship by putting to an end the English practice of seriatim opinions, THE IMPORTANCE OF UNANIMITY 159 Not only was Chief Jus...

Remembering the Great Chief Justice

Remembering the Great Chief Justice

Remembering the Great Chief Justice

Remembering the Great Chief Justice CHARLES F. HOBSON From the moment he departed mortal life in July 1835, John Marshall secured a place of first rank in the American pantheon. Joseph Story, his close friend and brother judge, pro­ nounced him “a great man”—notjust a great man ofhis time but “a great man in any age, and of all ages...one of those, to whom centuries alone give birth.” Although uttered in the fulsome language of eulogy, Story’s verdict, coming from one who knew Marshall intimately over many years, rings true. Indeed, added Story, Marshall was not one of those celebrated men who “appeared greatest at a distance” and whose “superiority vanished on a close survey”; rather, “it required some degree of intimacy fully to appreciate his powers; and those who knew him best, and saw him most, had daily reason to wonder at the vast extent and variety of his intellectual resources.”1 Today, two hundred years after his ap­ pointment as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Marshall’s reputa­ tion remains as high as ever, resting on a solid foundation that is virtually resistant to icono­ clastic attack. Both the public at large and es­ pecially the fraternity of lawyers and judges hold Marshall in reverent regard. Even aca­ demics—law professors, political scientists, and historians, whose business it is to study American constitutional law and history—ac­ knowledge his greatness. In any ranking of American jurists, Marshall is always listed among the “greats” and usually heads the list.2 It is true, of course, that Marshall’s reputation benefited from the perception that he was on the “right” side of history. The Constitution is still the framework of our government and our fundamental law; the federal union and gov­ ernment brought into existence by the Consti­ tution have endured, stronger and more pow­ erful than Marshall could possibly have imagined; and the Supreme Court continues to sit here in Washington, enjoying unques­ tioned authority to expound and pronounce the law of the Constitution. The enduring sue- 294 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY cess of our Constitution and government— and particularly the flourishing state of the ju­ dicial branch—are attributed in no small mea­ sure to Marshall. He was there at the begin­ ning—when the federal government was in its infancy, when the details of the Constitution began to be filled in, when the Constitution first entered the court system as a law to be expounded and applied in the ordinary course of adjudicating cases, and when the Supreme Court first began to acquire its identity as the interpreter and guardian of the Constitution and arbiter of the federal system. Marshall, then, is a “father” or “founder”—the father of the Supreme Court, the founder of American constitutional law— or, as Story dubbed him, “the Expounder ofthe Constitution of the United States.”3 Indeed, so large does Marshall’s shadow loom over the early years of the Supreme Court that many Americans mistakenly assume he was the first Chief Justice, rather than the fourth. The U.S. Postal Service literally gave its stamp of ap­ proval to this assumption back in February 1990, when it issued a commemorative of the bicentennial of the first meeting of the Su­ preme Court. Do you recall whose image was on that twenty-five-cent stamp? Not that of John Jay, the first ChiefJustice. This audience, to be sure, does not need to be reminded that there was a Supreme Court, there was a consti­ tutional law, before Marshall, and that the His­ torical Society sponsors a documentary edition devoted to the Court’s first decade. Long ago, Marshall left the realm of his­ tory and entered the realm ofmyth and symbol. Perhaps Story began the myth-making pro­ cess, but it was carried to completeness by the outpouring of hagiography that occurred dur­ ing the 1901 centennial and especially by the publication of Albert J. Beveridge’s four-volume biography in 1919.4 More than anyone else, Beveridge established the heroic image of Marshall as a colossus who bestrode history and shaped it according to his prescient vision and will. As depicted...

The Great Chief Justice: John Marshall and the Rule of Law. Charles F. HobsonNew Deal Justice: The Constitutional Jurisprudence of Hugo L. Black, Felix Frankfurter, and Robert H. Jackson. Jeffrey D. HockettJustice Sandra Day O'Connor: Strategist on the Supreme Court. Nancy Maveety

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook Reviews. Charles F. Hobson . Jeffrey D. Hockett The Great Chief Justice: John Marshall and the Rule of Law. Charles F. Hobson New Deal Justice: The Constitutional Jurisprudence of Hugo L. Black, Felix Frankfurter, and Robert H. Jackson. Jeffrey D. Hockett Justice Sandra Day O'Connor: Strategist on the Supreme Court. Nancy Maveety D. Grier Stephenson Jr.D. Grier Stephenson Jr. Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Politics Volume 60, Number 1Feb., 1998 Sponsored by the Southern Political Science Association Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2648018 Views: 2Total views on this site Copyright 1998 University of Texas PressPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Charles F. Hobson, The Great Chief Justice: John Marshall and the Rule of Law, Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1996. Pp. xv + 256. $35.00 (ISBN 0-7006-0788-9). - Herbert A. Johnson, The Chief Justiceship of John Marshall, 1801–1835, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1997. Pp. xii + 317. $39.95 (ISBN 1-57003-121-5).

Charles F. Hobson, The Great Chief Justice: John Marshall and the Rule of Law, Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1996. Pp. xv + 256. $35.00 (ISBN 0-7006-0788-9). - Herbert A. Johnson, The Chief Justiceship of John Marshall, 1801–1835, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1997. Pp. xii + 317. $39.95 (ISBN 1-57003-121-5).

The Great Chief Justice: John Marshall and the Rule of Law.

John Marshall remains one of the towering figures in the landscape of American law. From the Revolution to the age of Jackson, he played a critical role in defining the province of the judiciary and the constitutional limits of legislative action. In this masterly study, Charles Hobson clarifies the coherence and thrust of Marshall's jurisprudence while keeping in sight the man as well as the jurist. Hobson argues that contrary to his critics, Marshall was no ideologue intent upon appropriating the lawmaking powers of Congress. Rather, he was deeply committed to a principled jurisprudence that was based on a steadfast devotion to a science of richly steeped in the common law tradition. As Hobson shows, such jurisprudence governed every aspect of Marshall's legal philosophy and court opinions, including his understanding of judicial review. The chief justice, Hobson contends, did not invent judicial review (as many have claimed) but consolidated its practice by adapting common law methods to the needs of a new nation. In practice, his use of judicial review was restrained, employed almost exclusively against acts of the state legislatures. Ultimately, he wielded judicial review to prevent the states from undermining the power of a national government still struggling to establish sovereignty at home and respect abroad. No chief justice and only one associate justice (William Douglas) served longer on the Supreme Court. But, as Hobson clearly shows, Marshall's deserved place in the pantheon of great American jurists rests far more upon principles than longevity. This book better than any other tells us why that's true and worthy of our attention.

The Great Chief Justice: John Marshall and the Rule of Law

The Great Chief Justice: John Marshall and the Rule of Law

The Great Chief Justice: John Marshall and the Rule of Law.

The Great Chief Justice: John Marshall and the Rule of Law.

The Great Chief Justice: John Marshall and the Rule of Law.

The Great Chief Justice: John Marshall and the Rule of Law.

The Great Chief Justice: John Marshall and the Rule of Law

(1997). The Great Chief Justice: John Marshall and the Rule of Law. History: Reviews of New Books: Vol. 25, No. 3, pp. 112-112.

The Great Chief Justice: John Marshall and the Rule of Law

The Great Chief Justice: John Marshall and the Rule of Law