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John Marshall: Definer of a Nation

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I am neither a historian nor an academic. But I am a journalist who covers the courts, and I have frequently heard attorneys mutter this or that about the "infamous" Marbury v. Madison decision. I bought the book after visiting the Supreme Court and read it immediately upon my return. Smith's narrative is well paced. And the historic content is not presented like a textbook or even a well-written academic tome. Rather, it reads like a biography should, telling the tale based on letters and other memorabilia and done so without excessive interpretation. While I was aware of Marshall's significant place in history in terms of Marbury v. Madison, I had no idea of his key roles in other events that shaped our nation. If you like history but don't like academic minutia, you will love this book as I have.

What a book and what a topic for a non-lawyer, early American history buff. I actually feel smarter now!

Seriously, Jean Edward Smith does a great job of pulling a tremendous amount of primary source material into a seamlessly integrated biography on US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall. In large part, because of all the primary source quotes, the book reads slowly, but without videos, photographs, and voice recordings, that's the best way to learn about historical figures from that era. Smith's own writing, research, and overall understanding of the material and ability to convey that to the reader is excellent.

I was not aware that John Marshall was so involved in Virginia politics after the War and was asked multiple times by fellow Virginian George Washington to take on major positions, only to be rebuffed. He was so highly admired even before he entered the Supreme Court. So, the first 300 pages cover Marshall's career leading up to his nomination. The next 200+ pages cover his tenure on the Supreme Court.

What is really nice, though, about the way Smith handles the biography, is that he constantly brings back recurring theme's in Marshall's life, whether it is Marshall's ability to get along with people from either side of the aisle and his remarkable affability and love of Madeira wine, or his plain old good judgment and belief in the supremacy of the Union, or his dedication to his job and the country and his ability to strengthen the Supreme Court by striving for unanimous decisions and collegiality among the individual Supreme Court justices.

And obviously, Smith does a good job of putting the importance of Marshall's decisions in perspective in his time and today. I've read perhaps 40 books on early American history, but John Marshall and the role of the Supreme Court has always been a black box or a side story. Smith does a great job of fleshing this out for me. Additionally, as always it is interesting to view history from different perspectives, and this book does a nice job of doing that all the way from the War of Independence through Andrew Jackson's reign.

Thank you Jean Edward Smith for your efforts.

John Marshall is primarily remembered as the great chief justice who handed down many of the decisions that defined the constitutional structure, which law students read every year and judges are still dealing with nearly two centuries later. But in his wonderful biography, Smith shows the full picture of Marshall and his significant influence prior to his chief justiceship. Marshall was a soldier during the Revolution who later entered Virginia politics somewhat unwillingly. He was a well respected lawyer who eventually earned a sizable fortune, unlike most of his contemporaries who inherited theirs. Smith provides all of this in a clear and detailed manner. Also, he avoids one of the great problems that biographers of the founding era have: the extreme focus many place upon private lives of these men while limiting coverage of their public acts. Smith explains Marshall's private life without obsessing on it unnecessarily.

Of course, most purchasers of this book are looking for information on Marshall's years on the bench and his impact upon the Constitution. All of the cases one would expect are dealt with in a thorough manner: Marbury, McCullough, Martin, Gibbons. The best part is of this book is that Smith goes beyond these great cases and provides detail on earlier caselaw that demonstrates Marshall's, and the Court's, commitment to nationalistic constitutional interpretations well before the seminal cases. This defeats criticism that claims Marshall had no support for his arguments, a criticism that develops from his habit of not citing to precedent. Particularly, some of the early unknown cases dealt with interesting issues of the war power and international law.

Smith's biography is detailed and compelling, I couldn't put it down. Even though I have a pretty strong knowledge of constitutional history and of the Marshall era, Smith's book provided a wealth of information on details that I had little idea even existed. I would strongly recommend it to both people interested in legal history as well as those interested more broadly in political history.

I don't think that there are any major monuments to John Marshall in the United States. He is nowhere to be found on the Mall in Washington, his face isn't carved into any mountains, and his image doesn't grace any form of national currency. Yet, if one were challenged to make a short list of individual Americans who had the greatest influence on the structure of our government and whose actions have reverberated down to our every day life, John Marshall would have to be on it.

For all intents and purposes, John Marshall defined the role of the Supreme Court in American government. As biographer Jean Edward Smith notes, when Marshall was suddenly appointed by John Adams to replace Oliver Ellsworth as Chief Justice in 1800, "he assumed leadership of a court that enjoyed little prestige and even less authority." When he died 36 years later he left a Court that was a bastion of stability, unity and respect in government and whose reputation was the highest in the land.

Although the majority of the book focuses quite naturally on Marshall's storied career as Chief Justice, Smith does highlight the long and varied service he gave to his country before joining the Court in 1801. Marshall was a valiant officer in the American Revolution, present at the battles of Brandywine, Germantown and Yorktown, and suffered the privations of Valley Forge (where he bunked with James Monroe). He became a celebrity when his tough stance against Talleyrand in the XYZ Affair became public knowledge in America in 1798 and he served in Congress and then briefly as Secretary of State in the administration of John Adams, where Marshall was a rare friend and political soul mate to the tortured Yankee president.

But the bulk of Smith's narrative is devoted to the so-called Marshall Court, especially the 1812-1823 court that decided many of the most important constitutional cases -- Martin v. Hunter's Lessee (1816), McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819), Cohens v. Virginia (1821), Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) -- and was the longest period of stability in membership in the history of the Supreme Court. Smith stresses that the Marshall Court and their famed decisions were a true team effort and not at all dominated by the Chief Justice as many have suggested. Rather, Smith argues that the Court was built on mutual respect, open dialogue (fueled by generous consumption of Madeira every night), and a strong sense of camaraderie that was fostered by the communal living that Marshall demanded of all the justices. Smith argues that the unanimous "opinion of the court" verdicts that many Republicans loathed, Thomas Jefferson especially, were a product of genuine consensus and intellectual agreement amongst the justices on the fundamental questions of constitutionality. One of the striking things about this period is that some powerful president who hated Marshall and the power of the Federal judiciary, such as Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, made appointments that were solid and politically moderate, and ultimately proved highly congenial to Chief Justice Marshall and his views, a fact that particularly galled Jefferson.

Much has been made of the mutual animosity between Jefferson and Marshall, and Smith confirms that the dislike was real and intense. However, Smith also argues that it was the extremists in both parties that forced the two great Virginians in the ring against one another. Both Marshall and Jefferson preferred conciliation and accommodation, he writes, but the High Federalists on the Right and extreme Republicans on the Left would have none of it. In Smith's estimation, Marshall was sincerely committed to creating a robust, but non-partisan and totally independent judiciary and in no way was a tool to the discredited Federalists.

Smith peppers the narrative with anecdotes that add life to the inherently dull nature of legal proceedings. For instance, in his review of the Yazoo land claim case that culminated in the landmark court decision in Fletcher v. Peck (1810), Smith tells how the Georgia legislature rescinded the original land sale legislation by using a magnifying glass in the noonday sun to literally torch the document with the rays of heaven. And then, during the Supreme Court proceedings, Chief Justice Marshall had to call a recess so Luther Martin, the famed trial lawyer and notorious inebriate who was representing Fletcher, could sober up.

Overall, the book is well-written and clear in composition. A few editorial changes could have made it even more readable. For instance, each chapter has 3 or 4 subtopics that Smith addresses one by one, but there are no breaks in the chapter. The paragraphs and themes just roll on one after the other. All that is needed is hitting the return key one extra time after each sub-section, but for some reason the editors decided not to do that. Also, the author uses detailed footnotes all throughout the book. In some cases, every page of a chapter, or close to it, has substantial footnotes elucidating some point made in the main narrative. I found these footnotes helpful, but they greatly interupted the flow of the narrative. Every few paragraphs the reader is hopping down to the footnote to get more background. Smith should have either tied the detail into the storyline or moved the content to the endnotes.

In closing, it is worth noting that Smith doesn't paper over Marshall's personal failings and some commonly held opinions of the man. For instance, Marshall had a reputation for indolence, which is surprising given how many Supreme Court decisions he authored and the five-volume official biography on George Washington he penned. Marshall was also a man of ambition in a period when such feelings and the concern with popularity and public opinion were considered especially ignoble. Finally, Smith suggests that money dominated many of Marshall's actions. He maintains that Marshall accepted the envoy assignment to Paris that led to the XYZ Affair primarily because he needed to raise money in Europe to complete a land purchase in Virginia and that his acceptance of the Secretary of State and then Chief Justice posts were driven by the financial compensation.

For anyone interested in the Founding Fathers and the Supreme Court in particular, Jean Edward Smith's "John Marshall" is a can't miss.

This is one of the best biographies I have read in recent years. While Marshall is best remembered today as the great Chief Justice and the originator of the notion of judicial review, Smith very much shows that there was more to the man, both public & private, than the few nuggets we all got in our Intro to American History classes.

In fact, the bulk of the book deals not with Marshall's 35 years on the bench, but with his other activities as a soldier, politician, diplomat and Secretary of State. One is left with profound admiration for Marshall's political skills while in Congress and in the Cabinet. As a moderate Federalist from Virginia, Marshall was in a tight spot, to say the least. His state was increasingly dominated with Jeffersonian Republicans who had little trust for the man, but on the other hand, the High Federalists from New England were more than a little suspicious of any Virginian, even one of their own party. Smith portrays a skillful politician & deal-maker who is able to walk deftly between the two camps and actually managed to get a few things done. One cannot help but wonder if the Federalist Party might have survived if Marshall had been at its helm or had been a Federalist candidate for president.

Marshall's time as a diplomat, spent in France during the years of the Directorate, also reveal him to be a canny negotiator who was more than equal to the task of dealing Talleyrand, the ultimate conniver of his time. Despite his somewhat rustic origins, Marshall was quite capable of adapting to the surroundings of the most cosmopolitan city in Europe, but without yielding to the corruption expected by the French bureaucracy.

All of this work by Smith shows that Marshall did not enter the Chief Justice's chair as a blank slate --- in fact, he already had a lifetime's experience in a myriad of different professions, and this no doubt contributed in large part to his great influence on the Court's development. I would suspect that his background is more impressive and varied than any of the Chief Justices that have succeeded him.

Unlike a lot of judicial histories, Smith does not get bogged down in the minutiae of the court decisions. In fact, relatively little time is spent discussing the decisions themselves, except for those that truly could be considered definitive. 35 years of court decisions could easily have made this an unworkable biography for Smith, who spends more time examining how Marshall, using his experience as a diplomat & legislator, was able to lead the court effectively and get it to render, for the most part, unanimous decisions.

Although Marshall & Thomas Jefferson were well-known as cousins who had a very strong mutual dislike of each other, Smith does not beat the reader over the head with this fact. Nor does Smith, despite his obvious partiality for Marshall, engage in excessive Jefferson-bashing. If anything, he gives Jefferson the benefit of the doubt, particularly in regards to the 1805 impeachment of Justice Chase. Smith regards the affair as being largely the making of rogue Congressional Republicans such as John Randolph of Roanoke (another cousin), although many historians believe that Jefferson had a much greater hand in instigating the affair.

The most Smith will criticize Jefferson on is his capacity for self-delusion, particularly where it concerned the Supreme Court. Jefferson came to regard the Marshall Court as an instrument of the Federalists, despite the fact that 5 of the 7 justices were Republican appointees. I find this to be an amusing parallel to modern-day criticism of the Court by some pundits, who view it as dominated by liberals --- despite the fact that 7 of the 9 justices have been appointed by Republican presidents. Evidently, some things never change.

This would also be a useful book for those critics of the court who feel that justices are too politically involved these days. A study of Court's history shows that rarely have the justices been political eunuchs, and certainly Marshall was no exception. Many of his decisions on the court, although he was careful not to run amok with judicial authority, were calculated as parries to the thrusts to various political extremists such as Spencer Roane (who, like most of the states'-rights crowd, comes off quite badly in this book, as Smith portrays him as being hopelessly out of step with the nations' evolution). Marshall as much as anyone was responsible for defining the notion that the federal government ultimately has authority over the respective states in national matters, a notion that would be put to the test a quarter century after Marshall's death.

Not only is this an informative book, but it is also very well-written and engaging. Do not let the 700+ pages daunt you, as the narrative flows quite briskly and will not bog the reader down. For most of us who know only know Marshall in connection with Marbury vs Madison, there is a lot more to the man than that --- this book will more than fill in the blank spaces.

This is a good read about a fascinating individual. John Marshall is clearly one of the most underrated shapers of our country and this book goes a long way in providing the texture and context of his life. The author does a good job of balancing history with legal scholarship and I believe that this is worthwhile for both the "lay-man" and the "law-man". I did believe that the author abridged the content a bit too much at times(for example, he did not cover Marshall's point of view on the Declaration of Independence or Articles of Confederation, and he covered the last 12 years of Marshall's life as Chief Justice in less than 50 pages), but overall, it was a solid investment of my time.

Although a long-time Jefferson fan, I could not put this book down about his "nemesis". Marshall turns out to have been every bit as patriotic, anti-party and fair minded as Jefferson is reputed to have been. As the author points out, it is hard to believe how two men that were so alike could dislike each other so much. Rather than ascertain the cause of their dislike, the author was very honest in stating that there doesn't seem to be any one particular instance to give reason to such enmity. As a matter of fact, the two men were related and Jefferson, as president, had appointed Marshall's father to an important surveyor's post. The author goes to great length to give Jefferson his due and to not be vindictive. While the author obviously likes Marshall, he does not play favorites or make excuses for his subject. He explains both men's actions and motivations and stresses that both were generally after the same goals for America. As he has in recent works, Jefferson did come across as a bit petulant and vindictive in some of his actions and reactions. I couldn't help many times agreeing with Marshall's points of view when looked at from a practical or legal point (independence of the courts, commerce clause protection, laws of contracts, strong national government and anti-nullification). He was also anti-slavery in a mild, southern way. Mr. Marshall comes across as a very bright, unpretentious, extremely likable man to friend and foe alike. He was able to prevent political differences from damaging friendships and always displayed a big heart (including leading local efforts to raise money to help the estate of the deceased Jefferson). Because of his personality and leadership style, this man was able to dignify the Supreme Court's position and led it to record an astounding proportion of unanimous decisions, helping the court not to avoid looking divided on important issues. The book is very well written and despite its apparent thickness it was a delight to read about such a relatively little-known giant in our history. I rank Marshall and Madison as probably the two least credited men in our history for getting the republic on firm ground and for tempering the extreme positions that people like Jefferson, Patrick Henry, state rightists and several High Federalists were advocating. No student or aficionado should miss reading this important work.

Those who decry the current state of judicial affairs in this country will be interested to learn that our modern court system has changed very little since its inception back in the 18th Century. This, along with many other scholarly insights, is the compelling undercurrent running through Jean Edward Smith's John Marshall: Definer of a Nation.

Smith, no stranger to scholarship himself, guides the reader in painstaking detail through the rise of one of the most renoun jurists of early American history, John Marshall. Marshall, who served his country first as a soldier under General George Washington and later as the first truly influential chief justice of the Supreme Court, is a figure ripe for investigation at this particularly legal-oriented period in our history. For it was Marshall who, in his landmark decision, Marbury v. Madison, first gave rise to the notion of judicial review, the concept that suggests that the Supreme Court indeed has final say over the constitutionality of a given state action.

What is fascinating about Marshall's life is how bitterly he had to fight to establish what we today take for granted, the Court's supreme authority. Marshall's relentless pursuit of a powerful judiciary was often at odds with the vision of his fellow founding father, Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, who pushed for a small, decentralized federal government in a largely agrarian America, was constanly at odds with Marshall, and the tale of their stormy political battles resonates throughout the pages of Smith's biography.

Of course, the philosophical musings and feindishly political battles of our founding fathers may not make for interesting reading for everyone. Smith's book is chock full of obscure anectdotes and oftentimes difficult-to-get-through detail. All the same, the interested reader seeking to understand just how our current court system got to be this way can do worse than pick up Smith's tome for some insight. For, in the end, the battles fought between America's early political titans bear a strong correlation to -- and perhaps even explain -- blips on the judicial radar screen now called things like "O.J."

I pretty much only read biographies. Of all the ones I have read, this is one of the best. I put in the same group as Robert Caro's LBJ books, Edmund Morriss' first biography of Teddy Rooseveldt (2nd wasn't quite as good), the Last Lion series on Churchill, the Manchester bio on MacArthur, and Mcullogh's Truman book. Those are the ones I really enjoyed reading the most.

This book is a mix between biography, history, and legal principles. All 3 parts were interesting. In law school, we spent much time studying Marbury v. Madison, but this book really put it in a great perspective, setting up one of the major themes of the book--the debate between Federalists and Republicans, ie Marshall and Jefferson.

The Federalist-Republican theme really helped put much of the reading into perspective, explaining Marshall's beleif in a strong central government and his philosophy in deciding the big cases like Marbury, Gibbons, Dartmouth College, Mcullough v. MD, and many others.

For me, this was one of those books I felt proud to have read. Marshall played an enormous role in shaping the Court, and I hardly knew a thing about him before this book. The author has a nice smooth style, and packs each sentence with research. I repsect the effort such a book must have taken.

John Marshall is without a doubt the most influential man in the history of this country. In a sense, his imporance and influence parallelled that of Washington in that the precedents he established became the tradition which lasted. Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, Adams obtained European aid, Madison authored the Constitution but in the overall scheme of things, the shape and direction of our country, its economy and balance of powers, its legal and political system was virtually set by the power of one man - John Marshall.

What is even more amazing is how singular he was and how his stewardship was a near miss. At a time when it seemed the whole country converted to anti-Federalisism and the Federalist party disappeared, there was Marshall, stalwart to the end. WIth a vigor that lasted to the end, he fought the Jeffersonians and their vision of America as a pastoral, agrarian society of gentlemen farmers. His rulings established the basis for the corporate capitalist system of property rights that has given this nation a level of prosperity never before seen.

More important, his rulings on Constitutional interpretation established the Supreme Court as the final arbiter of political decisions - something particularly handy in the 2000 election. Although Marshall represented a "strict Constructionist" viewpoint in the sense that he decried expansion of Federal power in what he deemed the wrong direction, i.e. the Jeffersonian direction, he was not averse to using the Federal government when the issue warranted. When he died he was the last of the "old school" but he set the pattern that has been adhered to every since.

Theh book is quite readable, the research admirable and can be understood by historian, lawyer or layman.