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The Eighteenth-Century Background of John Marshall's Constitutional Jurisprudence
Nelson, William
Nelson, William
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Abstract
Between John Marshall's appointment to the Supreme Court in 1801 and Andrew Jackson's inauguration as President in 1829, the Marshall Court declared one congressional act unconstitutional and invalidated state statutes in fourteen cases. Among these cases were many of Marshall's major judicial opinions, including Marbury v. Madison Fletcher v. Peck, McCulloch v. Maryland,s Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, and Gibbons v. Ogden. Marshall's constitutional cases have been of enduring significance and have generated widespread scholarly debate. Perhaps the single issue that has most divided scholars is whether the great Chief Justice should be understood to have been motivated primarily by political considerations or by more neutral principles that were less political in character. On the one hand, many scholars have concluded, to quote one leading constitutional historian, that "[a]s a good Federalist, Chief Justice Marshall sought, naturally, to embody the point of view of his party . . . in constitutional law." At the other extreme, there exists a body of scholarship that understands Marshalla nd his contemporarietso have "plant[ed] themselves upon the provisions of the written Constitution, and den[ied] to popular legislation the binding force of law, whenever such legislation infringe[d] a constitutional provision."