Rating: 
Summary: This book is a must read for anyone US legal history!
Review: John Marshall defined American law, politics and power. This book paints a vivid picture of who Marshall was, and why he is still important today. The author does an excellent job stating the facts and letting the reader decide for her/himself whether or not Marshall did the right or wrong in the very important decisions he made. This book is enlightening and well written. Marshall's life is wonderfully told through the authors use of clear and concise writing. This book is excellent. It clarifies many misconceptions of this great man who came out of a generation that claims many great men. Marshall may be the least understood of them all, but he certainly is no less important than any of his contemporaries in forming and defining the United States of America.
Rating:
Summary: This book is a must read for anyone US legal history!
Review: John Marshall defined American law, politics and power. This book paints a vivid picture of who Marshall was, and why he is still important today. The author does an excellent job stating the facts and letting the reader decide for her/himself whether or not Marshall did the right or wrong in the very important decisions he made. This book is enlightening and well written. Marshall's life is wonderfully told through the authors use of clear and concise writing. This book is excellent. It clarifies many misconceptions of this great man who came out of a generation that claims many great men. Marshall may be the least understood of them all, but he certainly is no less important than any of his contemporaries in forming and defining the United States of America.
Rating:
Summary: A full, complete life of an amazing American patriot
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: The TRUE Powers That Be
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Mike
Review: John Marshall was a good man and a great jurist. Fourth Chief Justice of the United States, he was nominated in the waning hours of the Adams Administration, in the twilight of the Age of Federalism. George Washington was dead and after the seminal elections of 1800 his calumniator, Thomas Jefferson, would become president. For the first time since the Founding, antifederalist Republicans would hold a majority of seats in both houses of Congress. Eager for power and constitutional revision, the antifederalists disdained the check-and-balances instituted among the tripartite branches of the central government, preferring direct popular control over law and policy, contemning the Constitution's Federalist defenders as monarchists. So, when Federalist Oliver Ellsworth suddenly resigned as chief justice, John Adams, the last Federalist president, moved quickly to deny Jefferson the appointment. When John Jay declined Adams' request to return to the Supreme Court, Adams quickly turned to Marshall, then only ten months his Secretary of State, a man with no judicial experience outside of Virginia's hustings court. The court Marshall joined was a paltry break on the presidency and the Congress. With little established authority or standing in the esteem of the nation, the Supreme Court heard few cases, deciding fewer still of lasting significance. With Jefferson's antifederal forces rushing into Washington with plans to severely restrict the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and threatening to overcome constitutional limits, the new chief justice had little at his disposal except his wit and his pen, his good humor and what an earlier biographer called his single idea, national union. Every aspect of the court and its jurisprudence was permeated by Marshall's influence, from jurisprudential hermeneutics to the quotidian features of the court. Marshall asserted that the Constitution was a legal document, not a mere expression of political aspirations, one susceptible of interpretation and application through the ordinary adjudicative processes; he established the supremacy of the Constitution (not the judiciary) and deftly asserted the power of the courts to set aside legislative acts where they exceeded the limited powers delegated to the Congress by the people in the Constitution. The power of the Supreme Court was robust according to its vital, but limited, purpose. The Supreme Court was guarantor of constitutional limitations, the last break on power. One observer notes of Marshall, "He hit the Constitution much as the Lord hit the chaos, at a time when everything needed creating." Much is made of Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton personifying contrasting archetypes recurrent American history, but with respect to the Constitution perhaps the better comparison is between Jefferson and Marshall. If Thomas Jefferson, as author of the Declaration of Independence, symbolizes in American history human liberty and majority rule, then John Marshall, as the greatest expositor of the Constitution, symbolizes order and the rule of law. While Jefferson feared the centralizing tendencies of the Constitution, especially the authority that the unelected Supreme Court would assert under Marshall, Marshall feared state particularism, the disastrous consequences of which he saw during the war when the fractious colonies were barely able to conduct the war. And although Smith points out Marshall was a heritor of the Age of Reason, he nonetheless feared that reason alone would not restrain men and that violence would naturally ensue in the absence of a powerful ordering union. As Irving Babbitt characterized Marshall's judicial philosophy, he sought to superimpose on the "ordinary self" of man, with his boundless appetites, the "higher self" of the Constitution, with its limits on the power of the states and Congress. Marshall believed that it was the paramount role of the courts to impose this "higher self" on the transient passions of the political branches. "To what quarter will you look for protection from an infringement on the Constitution, if you will not give the power of the Judiciary?" Moderate Federalists like Marshall saw the Constitution as a hedge against both popular and governmental caprice. The powers of the three branches of the central government were to be confined, the outer boundaries established by the text of the Constitution, with the federal courts patrolling the frontiers of delegated power for excursions that might lead to consolidated power, and thence to disunion or despotism. At the same time, the centrifugal forces that prevailed under the Articles of the Confederation would be bridled by the powers extracted from the states and delegated by the people to their central government, among them the power to conduct foreign relations and regulate commerce among the states. Each branch and level of government was limited to the exercise of power within its sphere. These limits would prove frustrating to Jefferson and his followers, no less than to latter-day "progressives," who justly saw these restrictions as breaks on their ambitions. But the American Constitution instituted a constitutional, not a direct, democracy, a republic where the exercise of power was diluted and subject to all manner of restriction and procedural regulation intended to purge power of folly, caprice and superfluity. When Jefferson bristled at the Constitution's legislative inefficiency, Marshall saw his impatience for what it was. "Every check on the wild impulse of the moment is a check on his [Jefferson's] power." Without the courts or some other guarantor of this system of limited and divided powers, Marshall recognized that this whole system would readily collapse under the press of ambitious men. In establishing the Supreme Court as the Constitution's vigorous guarantor, Marshall made his most memorable contribution. Although he was not the first to invoke the power of judicial review, he made it a vital source of judicial power, famously asserting it in principle in Marbury v. Madison (1801), while deftly declining its exercise in face of a hostile political climate. But he did not place undue faith in the courts, as many today do. Marshall did not assert that the Supreme Court's power was unlimited or that the Constitution was but wet clay in the hands of wilful judges, intended by the Founders to be a revolutionary document. As Robert Bork points out, although Marshall was not above misreading statutes, he was faithful to the Constitution. American federal courts exercised their power within a scheme of law and were confined by it no less than the political branches. Today's judicial activists take as the fountainhead of their power Marshall's decision in Marbury, neglecting the coordinate limits on the courts he fully acknowledged and saw as inescapable. "[I]t is apparent, that the framers of the constitution contemplated that instrument, as a rule for the government of courts, as well as of the legislature." Marshall saw judicial review as an essential institutional feature of the American system of law, but could not conceive that constitutional limits were mutable through judicial interpretation. "The powers of the legislature are defined and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the constitution is written. To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing, if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?" The role of the courts is vital, but should they arrogate unto themselves power not contained within the Constitution, disorder will ensue and the very purpose of a written constitution subverted. If the courts assume the power to remake the constitution outside of the democratic process, the Constitution's guarantees are jeopardized and liberty threatened, as surely as they would be by the extra-constitutional exercise of legislative or executive authority. Marshall was not a proponent of judicial supremacy, nor of constitutional obscurantism. "The enlightened patriots who framed our Constitution, and the people who adopted it, must be understood to have employed words in their natural sense, and to have intended what they said," he wrote in the Gibbons v. Ogden. He would have no part of rights or powers hidden in penumbras, those fecund areas of judicial activism. Earlier in his tenure, he established that jurisdiction of the courts was governed by the written law, not by the unenacted common law. Jean Edward Smith's biography of Marshall is a model of clarity and judiciousness. Its signal contribution is to remind us that the fate of innovators is to see their creations employed in ways and for purposes they did not intend and could not have imagined, and would have opposed. John Marshall has suffered more than most...
Rating:
Summary: The fate of innovators.
Review: John Marshall was a good man and a great jurist. Fourth Chief Justice of the United States, he was nominated in the waning hours of the Adams Administration, in the twilight of the Age of Federalism. George Washington was dead and after the seminal elections of 1800 his calumniator, Thomas Jefferson, would become president. For the first time since the Founding, antifederalist Republicans would hold a majority of seats in both houses of Congress. Eager for power and constitutional revision, the antifederalists disdained the check-and-balances instituted among the tripartite branches of the central government, preferring direct popular control over law and policy, contemning the Constitution's Federalist defenders as monarchists. So, when Federalist Oliver Ellsworth suddenly resigned as chief justice, John Adams, the last Federalist president, moved quickly to deny Jefferson the appointment. When John Jay declined Adams' request to return to the Supreme Court, Adams quickly turned to Marshall, then only ten months his Secretary of State, a man with no judicial experience outside of Virginia's hustings court. The court Marshall joined was a paltry break on the presidency and the Congress. With little established authority or standing in the esteem of the nation, the Supreme Court heard few cases, deciding fewer still of lasting significance. With Jefferson's antifederal forces rushing into Washington with plans to severely restrict the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and threatening to overcome constitutional limits, the new chief justice had little at his disposal except his wit and his pen, his good humor and what an earlier biographer called his single idea, national union. Every aspect of the court and its jurisprudence was permeated by Marshall's influence, from jurisprudential hermeneutics to the quotidian features of the court. Marshall asserted that the Constitution was a legal document, not a mere expression of political aspirations, one susceptible of interpretation and application through the ordinary adjudicative processes; he established the supremacy of the Constitution (not the judiciary) and deftly asserted the power of the courts to set aside legislative acts where they exceeded the limited powers delegated to the Congress by the people in the Constitution. The power of the Supreme Court was robust according to its vital, but limited, purpose. The Supreme Court was guarantor of constitutional limitations, the last break on power. One observer notes of Marshall, "He hit the Constitution much as the Lord hit the chaos, at a time when everything needed creating." Much is made of Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton personifying contrasting archetypes recurrent American history, but with respect to the Constitution perhaps the better comparison is between Jefferson and Marshall. If Thomas Jefferson, as author of the Declaration of Independence, symbolizes in American history human liberty and majority rule, then John Marshall, as the greatest expositor of the Constitution, symbolizes order and the rule of law. While Jefferson feared the centralizing tendencies of the Constitution, especially the authority that the unelected Supreme Court would assert under Marshall, Marshall feared state particularism, the disastrous consequences of which he saw during the war when the fractious colonies were barely able to conduct the war. And although Smith points out Marshall was a heritor of the Age of Reason, he nonetheless feared that reason alone would not restrain men and that violence would naturally ensue in the absence of a powerful ordering union. As Irving Babbitt characterized Marshall's judicial philosophy, he sought to superimpose on the "ordinary self" of man, with his boundless appetites, the "higher self" of the Constitution, with its limits on the power of the states and Congress. Marshall believed that it was the paramount role of the courts to impose this "higher self" on the transient passions of the political branches. "To what quarter will you look for protection from an infringement on the Constitution, if you will not give the power of the Judiciary?" Moderate Federalists like Marshall saw the Constitution as a hedge against both popular and governmental caprice. The powers of the three branches of the central government were to be confined, the outer boundaries established by the text of the Constitution, with the federal courts patrolling the frontiers of delegated power for excursions that might lead to consolidated power, and thence to disunion or despotism. At the same time, the centrifugal forces that prevailed under the Articles of the Confederation would be bridled by the powers extracted from the states and delegated by the people to their central government, among them the power to conduct foreign relations and regulate commerce among the states. Each branch and level of government was limited to the exercise of power within its sphere. These limits would prove frustrating to Jefferson and his followers, no less than to latter-day "progressives," who justly saw these restrictions as breaks on their ambitions. But the American Constitution instituted a constitutional, not a direct, democracy, a republic where the exercise of power was diluted and subject to all manner of restriction and procedural regulation intended to purge power of folly, caprice and superfluity. When Jefferson bristled at the Constitution's legislative inefficiency, Marshall saw his impatience for what it was. "Every check on the wild impulse of the moment is a check on his [Jefferson's] power." Without the courts or some other guarantor of this system of limited and divided powers, Marshall recognized that this whole system would readily collapse under the press of ambitious men. In establishing the Supreme Court as the Constitution's vigorous guarantor, Marshall made his most memorable contribution. Although he was not the first to invoke the power of judicial review, he made it a vital source of judicial power, famously asserting it in principle in Marbury v. Madison (1801), while deftly declining its exercise in face of a hostile political climate. But he did not place undue faith in the courts, as many today do. Marshall did not assert that the Supreme Court's power was unlimited or that the Constitution was but wet clay in the hands of wilful judges, intended by the Founders to be a revolutionary document. As Robert Bork points out, although Marshall was not above misreading statutes, he was faithful to the Constitution. American federal courts exercised their power within a scheme of law and were confined by it no less than the political branches. Today's judicial activists take as the fountainhead of their power Marshall's decision in Marbury, neglecting the coordinate limits on the courts he fully acknowledged and saw as inescapable. "[I]t is apparent, that the framers of the constitution contemplated that instrument, as a rule for the government of courts, as well as of the legislature." Marshall saw judicial review as an essential institutional feature of the American system of law, but could not conceive that constitutional limits were mutable through judicial interpretation. "The powers of the legislature are defined and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the constitution is written. To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing, if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?" The role of the courts is vital, but should they arrogate unto themselves power not contained within the Constitution, disorder will ensue and the very purpose of a written constitution subverted. If the courts assume the power to remake the constitution outside of the democratic process, the Constitution's guarantees are jeopardized and liberty threatened, as surely as they would be by the extra-constitutional exercise of legislative or executive authority. Marshall was not a proponent of judicial supremacy, nor of constitutional obscurantism. "The enlightened patriots who framed our Constitution, and the people who adopted it, must be understood to have employed words in their natural sense, and to have intended what they said," he wrote in the Gibbons v. Ogden. He would have no part of rights or powers hidden in penumbras, those fecund areas of judicial activism. Earlier in his tenure, he established that jurisdiction of the courts was governed by the written law, not by the unenacted common law. Jean Edward Smith's biography of Marshall is a model of clarity and judiciousness. Its signal contribution is to remind us that the fate of innovators is to see their creations employed in ways and for purposes they did not intend and could not have imagined, and would have opposed. John Marshall has suffered more than most...
Rating:
Summary: Gives Marshall his due as a principal architect of the govt.
Review: The author acknowledges up front that the book has little to say that is critical of the great Chief Justice. Nevertheless, the author presents a balanced view of the man and his times. As befits one of the greatest writers in legal history, Smith's prose is clear, precise and entertaining. Given Marshall's long tenure on the Court and his many accomplishments and associations with great historical figures, this book should be of interest to anyone with a serious interest in American History. One is left with the strong impression that Marshall's role in shaping the government has not been fully appreciated.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful biography, great history
Review: This book provides an excellent history of Marshall, constitutional law, and the supreme court. Marshall demonstrates that consensus can be more powerful than partisanship, a lesson that is often forgotten in today's sound-bite age.
Rating:
Summary: Mike
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: An Outstanding Biography of a great American
Review: This is an outstanding biography of a great American who not only gave the United States a solid foundation for its judicial system, but also shaped the judiciary as one of the major branches of the Government. The biography is a marvellous and beautiful piece of work by Jean Edward Smith. The focus is on John Marshall and the law. This exquisite literary work reveals a great mind and a great man! The author, by often quoting John Marshall's letters and legal opinions, portraits a creative mind with a capacity for splendid expression. I would recommend this book for anyone interested in American history and Government. I will also recommend this for all students and practioners of law.
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