John Marshall was an American politician and the Chief Justice of the United States. He piloted the Supreme Court through the first three and a half decades of the 19th century and set a course for the Court’s position within the national order that endures to the present day.
Background
Marshall was born on September 24, 1755 in a log cabin in Germantown, a rural community on the Virginia frontier, in what is now Fauquier County, to Thomas Marshall and Mary Isham Keith, the granddaughter of politician Thomas Randolph of Tuckahoe. Marshall was of English ancestry. The oldest of fifteen, John had eight sisters and six brothers, and several cousins were also raised with the family. Family unity, a tradition of learning, and a concern for affairs of the world shielded young Marshall from the barbarity of the frontier.
Education
Marshall was educated first at home by his mother and later with local Anglican clergy. But the Revolutionary War intruded itself on his studies, and he gained a commission as lieutenant in the Culpepper Minute Men, with whom he fought at the battle of Great Bridge. Marshall later served as an officer in the Virginia Continental Regiment, where he saw action at the battles of Brandywine, Germantown, and Stony Point. In 1780, after the conclusion of his military service, John resumed his studies, this time under George Wythe, who taught law at the College of William and Mary. His legal instruction was of brief duration, however. After three months he left the college, returned to Fauquier County, and was admitted to practice law before the Virginia bar.
Career
For the next 15 years, Marshall practiced law and participated in Virginia politics, serving in the Virginia House of Delegates, on the Virginia Privy Council of State from 1782 to 1784, and as the Recorder of the Richmond Hustings Court from 1785 to 1788. In the latter position Marshall assisted in meting out justice in a variety of minor civil and criminal matters; this would be his only judicial experience prior to ascending to the chief seat on the nation’s highest court.
In June 1788 he attended the Virginia convention that ultimately ratified the U.S. Constitution, lending his voice in support of ratification. After the Constitution became effective, though, Marshall avoided the steady stream of federal posts offered to him. He concentrated instead on building his legal practice, finding a solid business in defending Virginia debtors from their British creditors. This work eventually placed him before the newly created Supreme Court in 1796, where he argued - unsuccessfully - the case of Ware v. Hylton (1796), in which the Court invalidated a debtor- favoring Virginia law held to be inconsistent with the Treaty of Paris. President John Adams finally coaxed Marshall into federal service on a diplomatic mission to France, with Charles Pinckney and Elbridge Gerry. The unofficial French attempt to solicit a bribe from the American diplomats as the price of entering into negotiations with France, referred to as the XYZ Affair, ultimately made the mission unsuccessful. But Marshall found his national reputation in-creased among fellow citizens outraged at the French offense. Former president George Washington thereupon persuaded Marshall to run for Congress, and Marshall won election to the House of Representatives in 1799. The following year President Adams appointed him secretary of state.
Through McColloch, the Marshall court interpreted the Constitution as granting broad scope to national power. During the same decade, Marshall and his colleagues addressed the scope of what would become the most important of all congressional powers: the power to regulate interstate commerce. In Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), conflicting federal and state laws relating to navigation on a state’s waterways forced the Court to consider the breadth of congressional authority to regulate commerce among the states. In a landmark decision, the Court concluded that Congress did properly regulate traffic on state’s waterways, because the regulation of navigadon along state waterways affected interstate commerce. This ruling would eventually arm Congress with power to make laws on an immense range of subjects and provide a key underpinning for Congress’s modern legislative authority.
By 1812 Democratic appointments to the Supreme Court had deprived Federalists of their advantage there, but Marshall succeeded in dominating the Court’s decisions for more than a decade after this point. Up until 1825, when his influence on the Court finally began to decline, he authored a majority of the Court’s opinions. In the last decade of his tenure, Marshall’s leadership waned and health problems sapped his strength. He underwent gall bladder surgery in 1831 and suffered the death of his wife the following year. In February 1835 he attended his last session of the Court before seeking medical attention for an intestinal blockage. He died on July 6, 1835.
Marshall himself was not religious, and although his grandfather was a priest, never formally joined a church. He did not believe Jesus was a divine being, and in some of his opinions referred to a deist "Creator of all things." He was an active Freemason.
Politics
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. Although he was personally opposed to slavery, he consistently failed to put his beliefs into action - as he feared an upset to the societal order of the United States. He remained a stalwart advocate of Federalism and a nemesis of the Jeffersonian school of government throughout its heyday.
Views
Quotations:
"Certainly all those who have framed written constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and consequently the theory of every such government must be, that an act of the legislature repugnant to the Constitution is void."
"It is the peculiar province of the legislature to prescribe general rules for the government of society; the application of those rules to individuals in society would seem to be the duty of other departments."
Membership
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
,
United States
1804
American Antiquarian Society
,
United States
1813
Personality
Marshall's natural eloquence, charismatic personality, and rare gift for logical analysis were remarkable.
Connections
In 1780 Marshall fell in love with Mary Ambler. They were married in January 1783 and took up residence in Richmond, Virginia. They had 10 children, but lost four in childhood.