Review: John Marshall, a Man ‘Without Precedent’ - Note for a discussion, "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United."

Fergus M. Bordewich, Wall Street Journal

A lifelong Federalist, the Supreme Court chief justice served besides presidents who saw him as an enemy of their values. Fergus M. Bordewich reviews ‘Without Precedent’ by Joel Richard Paul.

Marshall image from article

Excerpt:

The work of the Marshall court appropriately forms the core of Mr. Paul’s book. His elucidation of its decisions—over 1,100, more than half of them written by Marshall—is refreshingly crisp and unhobbled by jargon. Although a lifelong Federalist, Marshall served his entire term during administrations controlled by Republicans, many of whom saw him as an enemy of their values.  ...

[T]he court unfurled a sequence of decisions that emphasized the supremacy of federal law, reflecting Marshall’s unbending belief that the Constitution was intended to “restrain or annul the sovereignty of the states” and providing a legal framework for the rejection of states-rights ideology. In 1821, he wrote in Cohens v. Virginia that state laws, “so far as they are repugnant to the constitution and laws of the United States,” were “absolutely void.” He consistently held that the Constitution was not a compact of the states but a creation of the people as such, undermining the premise that would soon gain force in the South: that states could nullify federal law. [JB emphasis]...

Increasingly, Southerners saw Marshall as a traitor to their interests. As Mr. Paul notes, “states rights” was never just an abstract principle; it bore directly on the hard political matter of slavery. ...

The muscular federalism of the early republic died with Marshall, who succumbed to a spinal injury in 1835, at age 79. “Marshall saw with cold clarity that he had become irrelevant in the age of Jackson,” writes Mr. Paul. “His time had passed.” Jackson replaced him with Roger Taney, who would ratify every states-rights claim that came before the court until his own demise during the Civil War. Taney is little remembered today, except as a bulwark of reactionary jurisprudence. Marshall, however, is justly celebrated as the most far-sighted justice ever to lead the Supreme Court. His lasting achievements are ably served by Mr. Paul’s deeply felt and penetrating biography.