John Marshall: The Man Who Made the Supreme Court

by Richard Brookhiser

Overview

The life of John Marshall, Founding Father and America's premier chief justice.

In 1801, a genial and brilliant Revolutionary War veteran and politician became the fourth chief justice of the United States. He would hold the post for 34 years (still a record), expounding the Constitution he loved. Before he joined the Supreme Court, it was the weakling of the federal government, lacking in dignity and clout. After he died, it could never be ignored again. Through three decades of dramatic cases involving businessmen, scoundrels, Native Americans, and slaves, Marshall defended the federal government against unruly states, established the Supreme Court's right to rebuke Congress or the president, and unleashed the power of American commerce. For better and for worse, he made the Supreme Court a pillar of American life.

In John Marshall, award-winning biographer Richard Brookhiser vividly chronicles America's greatest judge and the world he made.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465096220
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	11/13/2018
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	292,697
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and the author of eleven books, including James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, American, and Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington. He lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

A Note on Spelling and Usage ix

Introduction John Marshall George Washington 1

Section I Early Life

Chapter 1 Soldier 11

Chapter 2 Lawyer 27

Chapter 3 Local Politician 41

Chapter 4 Diplomat, Congressman, Secretary of State 59

Section II Beleaguered Chief Justice

Chapter 5 The Case of the Missing Commission 77

Chapter 6 Impeachment 97

Chapter 7 Treason 107

Chapter 8 Corruption and Contracts 123

Section III Magisterial Chief Justice

Chapter 9 A Small College 137

Chapter 10 Bankers and Embezzlers 155

Chapter 11 Jewish Lottery Runners 169

Chapter 12 Steamboats and Commerce 181

Section IV Chief Justice: The Waning Years

Chapter 13 Slavers 195

Chapter 14 Bankrupts 211

Chapter 15 Cherokees 223

Chapter 16 Missionaries 237

Chapter 17 Bill of Rights 249

Legacy: Marshall, Jefferson, Lincoln 261

Acknowledgments 279

Notes 281

Bibliography 303

Index 309

Editorial Reviews

As Brookhiser's compact and balanced account makes clear, Marshall famously transformed the judicial branch into one fully equal to the president and Congress in stature and legitimacy. And he did so by declining to pick political fights he couldn't win in the short term while declaring broad constitutional principles that would shore up the authority of the courts in the long term.

The New York Times Book Review - Jeffrey Rosen

"As Brookhiser shows in this brisk biography, Marshall's success was partly due to the power of his legal reasoning and partly to his brilliant management of the men who served with him on the Supreme Court...Marshall would doubtless be pleased that it is his ideas that dominate this biography, not his quarrels, debts, ambitions, or amours."—Foreign Affairs

"In Brookhiser's short and captivating biography, Marshall emerges as the institution's first great partisan operative.... The career of the great chief justice continues to this day to calibrate our expectations for the court."—New Republic

"Mr. Brookhiser explains [Marshall's] decisions, and the disputes that gave rise to them, with the clarity and verve that we have come to expect from his lapidary historical portraits...[A] fine book."—Wall Street Journal

"As Richard Brookhiser's fine new biography makes clear, the polarization of the age of Marshall matched (or even surpassed) our current battles over the composition of the Supreme Court...[A] balanced account."—New York Times Book Review

"Marshall's...sphinx-like quality has proved tempting to biographers, and Brookhiser's volume is the third to appear since the beginning of 2016. It is also the first that is genuinely satisfying.... Elegant and readable."— National Review

"Entertaining and instructive...Brookhiser brings to vivid life the gaudy facts and seamy characters behind such great cases as Dartmouth College and McCulloch."—Washington Post

"Informative without being dull, thesis-driven without being argumentative...Another good entry in the good series of works on the Founders that Brookhiser has been giving us all these years."—Washington Free Beacon

"Full of wisdom."—Florida Bar Journal

"A concise, informative, and at times entertaining biography of our nation's fourth chief justice."—Kirkus Reviews

"Richard Brookhiser brings his deep knowledge of the American founding, his appreciation for history's crisscrossing patterns, and his signature minimalist style to America's greatest chief justice. His book is also timely. For John Marshall's seminal conviction was that we were a single people, and that government was not 'them' but 'us.'"—Joseph J. Ellis, author of American Dialogue: The Founders and Us

"Richard Brookhiser is a master of the interpretive biography, and his incisive portrait of John Marshall couldn't be more timely. The Supreme Court stands at the middle of the American political arena, and Marshall is the man who put it there."—H.W. Brands, author of Heirs of the Founders

"Brookhiser's John Marshall is an erudite and elegant tour through not only the great chief justice's life, but the beginnings of the United States and the nation's Supreme Court. With colorful portraits of members of the founding generation, and clear and insightful descriptions of the legal cases that that shaped the American legal system, this book is a welcome contribution to the scholarship on the Early American Republic."—Annette Gordon-Reed, coauthor of "Most Blessed of the Patriarchs"

From the Publisher

2018-09-03

A brief biography of a legendary chief justice.

When John Marshall (1755-1835) was sworn in as chief justice in 1801, writes National Review senior editor and biographer Brookhiser (Founders' Son: A Life of Abraham Lincoln, 2014, etc.), the Supreme Court met in a small committee room of the U.S. Capitol under the House of Representatives, a strong indication that the judiciary was the weakest of the three branches of the federal government. Yet before his death more than three decades later, "he and the Court he led had…laid down principles of laws and politics that still apply." The oldest of 15 children, Marshall had only two years of formal schooling; his true education came with his service under George Washington in the Revolutionary War. Marshall thought Washington was "the greatest Man on earth" and used Washington's selfless patriotism as a guide for the rest of his life. Following the war, Marshall established a law practice and served as a Virginia ratifying convention delegate, congressman, diplomat, and secretary of state. His lengthy tenure as chief justice was marked by vigorous defenses of the sanctity of contracts (Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 1819), the supremacy of the federal judiciary (Marbury v. Madison, 1803), and the protection of federal institutions from state interference (McCulloch v. Maryland, 1819). Yet more important than the individual decisions, notes Brookhiser, were the "dignity" that Marshall gave to the Supreme Court and his defense of the Constitution "as the people's supreme act." As for the man himself, Marshall was an affable sort who enjoyed his madeira and was devoted to his long-suffering wife, Polly. The author also provides absorbing character sketches of several of Marshall's all-but-forgotten legal contemporaries, including Luther Martin, William Pinkney, and Samuel Chase.

Brookhiser's book may be overshadowed by Joel Richard Paul's recently published Without Precedent, a lengthy and well-received study of Marshall's life and times. Nevertheless, those looking for a concise, informative, and at times entertaining biography of our nation's fourth chief justice would do well to read this one.

Kirkus Reviews

The music that frames the beginning of Robert Fass’s narration sets the tone for the rest of this audiobook about John Marshall, who became the Supreme Court’s chief justice in 1801. The work is classy, dramatic, and important, and Fass doesn’t disappoint as he uses his warm, low tone and clear diction to interpret the author’s words so that we can enjoy and learn from them. Fass provides a consistent delivery, pausing effectively for emphasis, which allows the drama of the court cases Marshall heard to take center stage. While Fass doesn’t employ an especially expressive or elastic voice, he does enough to keep this analysis of one of our most influential Supreme Court justices interesting and noteworthy. R.I.G. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2019 - AudioFile

The music that frames the beginning of Robert Fass’s narration sets the tone for the rest of this audiobook about John Marshall, who became the Supreme Court’s chief justice in 1801. The work is classy, dramatic, and important, and Fass doesn’t disappoint as he uses his warm, low tone and clear diction to interpret the author’s words so that we can enjoy and learn from them. Fass provides a consistent delivery, pausing effectively for emphasis, which allows the drama of the court cases Marshall heard to take center stage. While Fass doesn’t employ an especially expressive or elastic voice, he does enough to keep this analysis of one of our most influential Supreme Court justices interesting and noteworthy. R.I.G. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2019 - AudioFile