The Chief Justiceship of John Marshall 1801-1835

Chief Justiceships of the United States Supreme Court

by Herbert Alan Johnson

Perhaps no one has exerted a more profound influence on the United States Supreme Court or on the Federal Constitution than Chief Justice John Marshall. In this history of the high court during the critical years from 1801 to 1835, Herbert A. Johnson offers a comprehensive portrait of the court's activities and accomplishments under Marshall's leadership. Johnson demonstrates that in addition to staving off political attacks from the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian political parties, the Marshall Court established the supremacy of the federal government in areas of national concern, enunciated the commerce and contract clauses as critical foundations for economic development, and definitively shaped the structure of federalism before the Civil War.

317 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Herbert A. Johnson is the Ernest F. Hollings Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of South Carolina School of Law in Columbia. A past president of the American Society for Legal History, Johnson is a former editor of The Papers of John Marshall.

Reviews

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

While certainly not a book for the casual reader, this overview of the Marshall Court and its contributions to American statecraft is comprehensive in its approach and cannot he topped in terms of its detailed analysis to each case discussed. As someone who has studied and researched all things related to John Marshall for several years, this it probably the most detailed overview of the legal legacies of the Marshall Court that I have come across.

I was initially hesitant to give this book 5 stars as I felt it didn’t go deeply enough into the freedom suits that the Court rejected under Marshall’s leadership (such as the Mima Queen case) or his role in promoting the doctrine of discovery to allow for the subjugation of indigenous peoples (Johnson v McIntosh), I decided to still give it full marks as i was satisfied with Johnson’s discussion of these cases and touches at their significance, but others might find this part of the book wanting.

Overall I would recommend this book to someone who is interested in legal history as well as historians studying the early republic period who are interested in the development of the relationship between the three branches of the federal government and in how the federal-state relationship was forged through controversy, political backlash, and growing sectionalism.