John Marshall

Marshall, John

(1755–1835) Supreme Court justice; born in Prince William (now Fauquier) County, Va. Born in a log cabin, with little formal education, he fought in the American Revolution and studied law briefly (1779–80) before setting up a practice and getting elected to the Virginia legislature (1782). An outspoken advocate of the Federalists' position on the need for a strong central government, he was asked by President George Washington (1795) to be the U.S. attorney general but he declined because of his financial difficulties. After helping to negotiate Jay's Treaty in France (1797–98), he was elected to the House of Representatives (Fed., Va.; 1799–1800) but left when President John Adams appointed him chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1801–35). During his 34 years, the "Marshall court" profoundly shaped the law and government of the U.S.A. by testing and defining the powers of the new Constitution. Perhaps his most important decision was Marbury v. Madison (1803), in which he laid down the concept of "judicial review"—namely, that federal courts had the final say in deciding whether congressional legislation was constitutional. In various other decisions over the years, he enforced his view of the supremacy of a strong federal government over the demands of states and their legislatures; presiding over the treason trial of Aaron Burr (1807), he went out of his way to attack the anti-Federalist positions of President Thomas Jefferson (a distant relative). Often the focus of political controversy, autocratic in his dominance of the court—it was he who imposed the practice of issuing a single majority opinion—he had a casual frontier manner but the keenest of intellects. The Liberty Bell in Philadelphia cracked when ringing for the funeral of Marshall.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.