John Marshall

John Marshall (born Sept. 24, 1755, near Germantown [now Midland], Va.—died July 6, 1835, Philadelphia, Pa.) was the fourth chief justice of the United States and principal founder of the U.S. system of constitutional law. As perhaps the Supreme Court’s most influential chief justice, Marshall was responsible for constructing and defending both the foundation of judicial power and the principles of American federalism. The first of his great cases in more than 30 years of service was Marbury v. Madison (1803), which established the Supreme Court’s right to expound constitutional law and exercise judicial review by declaring laws unconstitutional. His defense of federalism was articulated in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), which upheld the authority of Congress to create the Bank of the United States and declared unconstitutional the right of a state to tax an instrument of the federal government. In his ruling on McCulloch, Marshall at once explained the authority of the court to interpret the constitution, the nature of federal-state relations inherent in a federal system of government, and the democratic nature of both the U.S. government and its governing. During his tenure as chief justice, Marshall participated in more than 1,000 decisions, writing more than 500 of them himself.

Youth

John Marshall was born in a log cabin and was the eldest of 15 children of Thomas Marshall, a sheriff, justice of the peace, and land surveyor who came to own some 200,000 acres (80,000 ha) of land in Virginia and Kentucky and who was a leading figure in Prince William county (from 1759 Fauquier county), Va., and Mary Keith Marshall, a clergyman’s daughter whose family was related to both the Randolphs and the Lees (two of Virginia’s most prominent families). Marshall’s childhood and youth were spent in the near-frontier region of Fauquier county, and he later lived in the Blue Ridge mountain area where his father had acquired properties. His schooling was primarily provided by his parents, supplemented only by the instruction afforded by a visiting clergyman who lived with the family for about a year and by a few months of slightly more formal training at an academy in Westmoreland county.

Early career

When political debate with England was followed by armed clashes in 1775, Marshall, as lieutenant, joined his father in a Virginia regiment of minutemen and participated in the first fighting in that colony. Joining the Continental Army in 1776, Marshall served under George Washington for three years in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, his service including the harsh winter of 1777–78 at Valley Forge. He eventually rose to the rank of captain, and when the term of service of his Virginia troops expired in 1779, Marshall returned to Virginia and thereafter saw little active service prior to his discharge in 1781.

Marshall’s only formal legal training was a brief course of lectures he attended in 1780 at William and Mary College given by George Wythe, an early advocate of judicial review. Licensed to practice law in August 1780, Marshall returned to Fauquier county and was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1782 and 1784. Attending the sessions of the legislature in the state capital at Richmond, he established a law practice there and made the city his home after his marriage to Mary Ambler in January 1783.

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For the next 15 years Marshall’s career was marked by increasing stature at the bar of Virginia and within Virginia politics. Although by 1787 he had not achieved a public position that would have sent him as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, he was an active, if junior, proponent of the new Constitution of the United States in the closely contested fight for ratification. That year Marshall was elected to the legislature that would take the first step toward ratification by issuing a call for a convention in Virginia to consider ratifying; he was also elected a delegate to the convention. His principal effort on the floor of the convention was, perhaps prophetically, a defense of the judiciary article. He then used his acknowledged popularity to gain or build the narrow margin by which Virginia’s ratification of the Constitution was won.

Shortly after the new constitution came into force, President Washington offered Marshall appointment as U.S. attorney for Virginia, a post Marshall declined. In 1789, however, he sought and obtained a further term in Virginia’s House of Delegates as a supporter of the national government. As party lines emerged and became defined in the 1790s, Marshall was recognized as one of the leaders of the Federalist Party in Virginia. In 1795 Washington tendered him an appointment as attorney general. This, too, was declined, but Marshall returned to the state legislature as a Federalist leader.

In 1797 Marshall accepted an appointment by Pres. John Adams to serve as a member of a commission, with Elbridge Gerry and Charles C. Pinckney, that unsuccessfully sought to improve relations with the government of France. After the mission, reports were published that disclosed that certain intermediaries, some shadowy figures known as X, Y, and Z (see XYZ Affair), had approached the commissioners and informed them that they would not be received by the French government unless they first paid large bribes; the reports further revealed that these advances had been rebuffed in a memorandum prepared by Marshall. Marshall subsequently became a popular figure, and the conduct of his mission was applauded by one of the earliest American patriotic slogans, “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute.”

Upon his return from France, Marshall declined appointment to the Supreme Court to succeed James Wilson, but he was persuaded by Washington to run for Congress and was elected in 1799 as a Federalist. His service in the House of Representatives was brief, however. His chief accomplishment there was the effective defense of the president against a Republican attack for having honoured a British request under the extradition treaty for the surrender of a seaman charged with murder on a British warship on the high seas.

In May 1800 President Adams requested the resignation of his secretary of war and offered the post to Marshall, and again Marshall declined. Adams then dismissed his secretary of state and offered Marshall the vacant position. In an administration harassed by dissension and with uncertain prospects in the forthcoming election, the appeal of the invitation must have been addressed principally to Marshall’s loyalty. After some initial hesitation, Marshall accepted. In the autumn of 1800, Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth resigned because of ill health. Adams, defeated in the November election, tendered reappointment to John Jay, the first chief justice, but Jay declined. Adams then turned to Marshall, and in January 1801 Adams sent to the Senate the nomination of John Marshall to be chief justice. The last Federalist-controlled Senate confirmed the nomination on Jan. 27, 1801. On February 4, Marshall was sworn in, but at Adams’s request Marshall continued to act as secretary of state for the last month of the Adams presidential administration. (Marshall also served briefly, at Jefferson’s request, as secretary of state in Jefferson’s administration.)

(Read John Kennedy’s Britannica entry on Oliver Ellsworth.)