CONTENTS
I. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE NATIONAL JUDICIARY
II. MARSHALL'S EARLY YEARS
III. JEFFERSON'S WAR ON THE JUDICIARY
IV. THE TRIAL OF AARON BURR
V. THE TENETS OF NATIONALISM
VI. THE SANCTITY OF CONTRACTS
VII. THE MENACE OF STATE RIGHTS
VIII. AMONG FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS
IX. EPILOGUE
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
JOHN MARSHALL AND THE CONSTITUTION
CHAPTER I. The Establishment Of The National Judiciary
The monarch of ancient times mingled the functions of priest and judge.
It is therefore not altogether surprising that even today a judicial
system should be stamped with a certain resemblance to an ecclesiastical
hierarchy. If the Church of the Middle Ages was "an army encamped on the
soil of Christendom, with its outposts everywhere, subject to the most
efficient discipline, animated with a common purpose, every soldier
panoplied with inviolability and armed with the tremendous weapons which
slew the soul," the same words, slightly varied, may be applied to the
Federal Judiciary created by the American Constitution. The Judiciary of
the United States, though numerically not a large body, reaches through
its process every part of the nation; its ascendancy is primarily
a moral one; it is kept in conformity with final authority by the
machinery of appeal; it is "animated with a common purpose"; its members
are "panoplied" with what is practically a life tenure of their posts;
and it is "armed with the tremendous weapons" which slay legislation.
And if the voice of the Church was the voice of God, so the voice of
the Court is the voice of the American people as this is recorded in the
Constitution.
