John Marshall

John Marshall
Born	John Marshall 24 9, 1755
Birthplace	Germantown, Colony of Virginia, British America
Died	Template:Death date and age Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Jurist, statesman, soldier
Known for	Longest-serving Chief Justice of the United States; establishing judicial review in Marbury v. Madison
Education	College of William & Mary
Spouse(s)	Mary Willis Ambler
Children	10
Awards	Longest-serving Chief Justice of the United States

John Marshall (September 24, 1755 – July 6, 1835) was an American statesman, jurist, and Founding Father who served as the fourth Chief Justice of the United States from 1801 until his death in 1835, making him the longest-serving chief justice and fourth-longest-serving justice in the history of the United States Supreme Court. Born in the rural backcountry of colonial Virginia, Marshall rose from modest origins to become one of the most consequential figures in American law. He served in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, practiced law in Virginia, represented the United States in diplomatic negotiations during the XYZ Affair, served briefly as a member of the United States House of Representatives and as United States Secretary of State under President John Adams, and ultimately reshaped the American judiciary during his 34-year tenure on the Supreme Court. His landmark opinion in Marbury v. Madison (1803) articulated the principle of judicial review—the power of federal courts to invalidate laws that conflict with the Constitution—and his subsequent decisions in cases such as McCulloch v. Maryland, Gibbons v. Ogden, Fletcher v. Peck, and Dartmouth College v. Woodward established foundational principles of constitutional law regarding federal supremacy, the scope of congressional power, and the sanctity of contracts. Marshall was one of the few Americans to have held a constitutional office in each of the three branches of the federal government—legislative, executive, and judicial.

Early Life

John Marshall was born on September 24, 1755, in Germantown, a small settlement in the frontier region of the Colony of Virginia in British America. He was the eldest of fifteen children born to Thomas Marshall and Mary Randolph Keith. His father, Thomas Marshall, was a farmer, surveyor, and local political figure who served in the Virginia House of Burgesses and later held positions of authority in the colony. Through his mother, Marshall was distantly related to the prominent Randolph family of Virginia, one of the most influential families in colonial Virginia society.

Marshall grew up in the Virginia backcountry, far removed from the tidewater plantations and urban centers of colonial life. His early education was limited and largely directed by his father, who instilled in him a love of literature and learning. Thomas Marshall was himself a well-read man who had studied surveying under George Washington's father and maintained a close association with the Washington family. The elder Marshall provided his son with access to books, including the works of Alexander Pope, and arranged for a period of formal instruction under a clergyman, the Reverend Archibald Campbell, and later under James Thomson, a Scottish tutor.

Despite the relative informality of his education, Marshall developed sharp analytical abilities and a strong grounding in English literature and history. The frontier environment in which he was raised also shaped his character, fostering self-reliance, physical hardiness, and an egalitarian temperament that distinguished him from the more aristocratic members of the Virginia gentry. His upbringing on the Virginia frontier would later influence his nationalist political outlook, as backcountry settlers often looked to a strong central government to provide security and economic development that the state governments could not effectively deliver.

When the political tensions between the American colonies and Great Britain escalated in the early 1770s, the Marshall family was firmly on the side of the patriot cause. Thomas Marshall served as a member of the Virginia conventions that organized resistance to British rule, and young John Marshall, still a teenager, began participating in local militia activities.

Education

Marshall's formal education was brief compared to that of many of his contemporaries among the Founding Fathers. He spent approximately two years studying under private tutors in his youth, including a period with the Reverend Archibald Campbell of Westmoreland County, Virginia.

In 1780, during a lull in his military service, Marshall attended a course of law lectures delivered by George Wythe at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Wythe was one of the foremost legal scholars in America and had also taught Thomas Jefferson. Marshall's time at William & Mary was relatively short—lasting only about six weeks—but the lectures provided him with a foundation in the principles of English common law and legal reasoning that would undergird his subsequent career. He was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1780, having obtained a license signed by Governor Thomas Jefferson.

Career

Revolutionary War Service

When the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1775, Marshall enlisted in the Culpeper Minutemen, a local Virginia militia unit. He participated in the Battle of Great Bridge in December 1775, one of the early engagements of the war in Virginia. In 1776, he was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Continental Army and served in the 11th Virginia Regiment, later transferring to the 7th Virginia Regiment.

Marshall served in numerous engagements during the war, including the Battle of Brandywine, the Battle of Germantown, and the Battle of Monmouth. He also endured the harsh winter encampment at Valley Forge during 1777–1778, an experience that profoundly shaped his political views. The suffering and deprivation he witnessed at Valley Forge, caused in large part by the inability of the Continental Congress to adequately supply the army, instilled in Marshall a deep conviction that a strong national government was essential to the survival and prosperity of the United States. He attained the rank of captain before leaving active military service in 1780.

Early Legal and Political Career

After his admission to the Virginia bar in 1780, Marshall established a law practice in Fauquier County and later moved to Richmond, which became his permanent home. He quickly gained a reputation as a skilled advocate, particularly in appellate practice before the Virginia courts. His legal practice was wide-ranging, involving land disputes, debt cases, and constitutional questions.

Marshall entered politics in the early 1780s, winning election to the Virginia House of Delegates, where he served intermittently during the 1780s and 1790s. He became a leading figure in Virginia's ratification debates over the United States Constitution in 1788. At the Virginia Ratifying Convention, Marshall argued forcefully in favor of the proposed Constitution, defending provisions related to the judiciary and the structure of the federal government against the objections of prominent Anti-Federalist opponents, including Patrick Henry and George Mason.

Throughout the 1790s, Marshall was recognized as one of the leading members of the Federalist Party in Virginia. President George Washington offered him several federal appointments, including the position of United States Attorney General, but Marshall declined these offers, preferring to remain in Virginia and continue his legal practice.

In October 1794, Marshall served briefly as acting Attorney General of Virginia, filling in for the ailing James Innes until Innes was able to resume the office in March 1795.

The XYZ Affair and Congressional Service

In 1797, President John Adams appointed Marshall as one of three envoys—alongside Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and Elbridge Gerry—to travel to France to negotiate an end to French attacks on American merchant shipping. The diplomatic mission became embroiled in what became known as the XYZ Affair when agents of the French foreign minister, Talleyrand, demanded bribes and a loan to France as preconditions for formal negotiations. Marshall and Pinckney refused these demands, and the mission collapsed. When the details of the affair were published in the United States, the American public rallied behind the envoys, and Marshall returned home as a national hero.

Riding the wave of public support generated by the XYZ Affair, Marshall was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1799, representing a Virginia district. He served a single term, during which he emerged as a leader of the Federalist faction in Congress. As a congressman, Marshall notably opposed the Alien and Sedition Acts that had been enacted under Adams's administration, arguing that the Sedition Act in particular posed a threat to civil liberties. He also supported the position of the Adams administration in the case of Thomas Nash (alias Jonathan Robbins), defending the president's authority to extradite a person under the terms of the Jay Treaty.

Secretary of State

In May 1800, President Adams undertook a major reorganization of his cabinet, dismissing Secretary of State Timothy Pickering and Secretary of War James McHenry, both of whom had been aligned with Alexander Hamilton's faction of the Federalist Party. Adams offered the position of Secretary of State to Marshall, who accepted and took office on June 13, 1800.

As Secretary of State, Marshall became one of the most influential members of the Adams administration during its final months. He managed diplomatic relations during a period of considerable international tension and played a role in the negotiations that led to the Convention of 1800, which ended the Quasi-War with France. Marshall served simultaneously as Secretary of State and Chief Justice for a brief period in early 1801, an overlap that would be considered improper by modern standards of separation of powers but was not unusual in the early republic.

Chief Justice of the United States

On January 20, 1801, President Adams nominated Marshall to serve as the fourth Chief Justice of the United States, following the resignation of Oliver Ellsworth. The Senate confirmed the nomination on January 27, 1801, and Marshall took office on February 4, 1801. He would serve as Chief Justice for the remaining 34 years of his life, until his death on July 6, 1835—a tenure that remains the longest in the history of the office.

Marshall assumed leadership of the Supreme Court at a critical juncture. The federal judiciary was still a relatively weak institution, and the Court had not yet established itself as a co-equal branch of government. Under Marshall's leadership, the Court underwent a transformation. He moved the Court away from the practice of issuing seriatim opinions, in which each justice wrote a separate opinion, and instead instituted the practice of issuing a single majority opinion for the Court, which he frequently authored himself. This procedural change enhanced the authority and clarity of the Court's pronouncements.

Marbury v. Madison (1803)

The most famous case of the Marshall Court, and arguably the most important case in American constitutional history, was Marbury v. Madison (1803). The case arose from the political conflict between the outgoing Federalist administration of John Adams and the incoming Democratic-Republican administration of Thomas Jefferson. In the final days of Adams's presidency, a number of judicial appointments—the so-called "midnight judges"—had been authorized but not all commissions had been delivered before Jefferson took office. William Marbury, one of the appointed justices of the peace for the District of Columbia, petitioned the Supreme Court for a writ of mandamus to compel Jefferson's Secretary of State, James Madison, to deliver his commission.

Marshall's opinion for the Court was a masterwork of judicial reasoning. He held that Marbury had a right to his commission and that Madison's refusal to deliver it was unlawful. However, Marshall then concluded that the provision of the Judiciary Act of 1789 that granted the Supreme Court original jurisdiction to issue writs of mandamus was unconstitutional, as it expanded the Court's original jurisdiction beyond what Article III of the Constitution permitted. By ruling that the Court lacked jurisdiction to grant Marbury's petition, Marshall avoided a direct confrontation with the Jefferson administration—which would likely have defied the Court's order—while simultaneously establishing the principle that the Supreme Court had the power to declare acts of Congress unconstitutional.

The principle of judicial review established in Marbury v. Madison became the foundation of American constitutional law and the basis of the Supreme Court's authority to interpret the Constitution. Scholars have debated the extent to which Marshall's opinion created the doctrine of judicial review or merely codified a principle that was already implicit in the constitutional structure and understood by the Founders. Recent scholarship has argued that the judicial power and duty to invalidate unconstitutional laws was not the work of one inventive judge but rather reflected a broader consensus among the founding generation.

Federal Supremacy and the Commerce Clause

After Marbury, the Marshall Court issued a series of landmark decisions that shaped the relationship between the federal government and the states.

In McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), the Court addressed two fundamental questions: whether Congress had the power to establish the Second Bank of the United States, and whether the state of Maryland could tax a branch of that bank. Marshall's opinion held that Congress possessed implied powers beyond those explicitly enumerated in the Constitution, articulating a broad interpretation of the Necessary and Proper Clause. He further held that Maryland's tax on the bank was unconstitutional, as it amounted to a state taxing an instrument of the federal government. Marshall's famous dictum—"the power to tax involves the power to destroy"—encapsulated his argument that states could not use their taxing authority to impede federal operations.

In Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), the Court addressed the scope of Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce under the Commerce Clause. The case involved competing claims to steamboat navigation rights on waters between New York and New Jersey. Marshall's opinion adopted a broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause, holding that congressional power over interstate commerce was plenary and could preempt conflicting state laws. The decision had far-reaching implications for the development of a national market economy.

The Contract Clause

Marshall also authored important opinions interpreting the Contract Clause of the Constitution. In Fletcher v. Peck (1810), the Court struck down a Georgia statute that attempted to rescind land grants that had been obtained through legislative bribery. Marshall held that the original land grants constituted a contract and that the Contract Clause prohibited states from passing laws that impaired the obligation of contracts, even if the original grants were tainted by corruption. The decision was notable as the first time the Supreme Court struck down a state law as unconstitutional.

In Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819), the Court held that a corporate charter was a contract protected by the Contract Clause, and that the state of New Hampshire could not unilaterally alter Dartmouth College's charter. The decision had significant implications for the development of American corporate law, as it established that private corporations were protected from arbitrary state interference.

Later Years on the Court

In his later years on the bench, Marshall increasingly found himself in dissent as the composition of the Court changed with appointments by Democratic-Republican and later Democratic presidents. The rise of Jacksonian democracy and the political ideology of states' rights challenged the nationalist jurisprudence that Marshall had championed. Nevertheless, Marshall continued to serve as Chief Justice and to exert considerable influence on the Court's deliberations until the end of his life.

One of the more controversial aspects of Marshall's later tenure involved the Court's relationship with the administration of President Andrew Jackson. In Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the Court held that the state of Georgia had no authority over the Cherokee Nation and that federal law took precedence in dealings with Native American tribes. The decision was largely ignored by both the state of Georgia and the Jackson administration, highlighting the limits of judicial power in the absence of executive enforcement.

Personal Life

John Marshall married Mary Willis Ambler on January 3, 1783, in Fauquier County, Virginia. Mary, known as "Polly," was the daughter of Jacquelin Ambler, the Treasurer of Virginia. The couple had ten children, though several died in infancy or childhood. Among the surviving children were Thomas Marshall and Edward Carrington Marshall.

Marshall and his wife settled in Richmond, Virginia, where they lived for the remainder of their lives. Marshall's home on Ninth Street in Richmond became a center of social and political activity. He was known for his personal warmth, informal manner, and fondness for socializing at the local taverns and markets. Contemporaries frequently noted the contrast between his simple, unpretentious demeanor and the immense power and influence he wielded as Chief Justice.

Mary Marshall suffered from chronic ill health for much of her adult life, and her condition weighed heavily on Marshall, who was devoted to her. She died on December 25, 1831. Marshall was deeply affected by her death and reportedly carried a locket containing her hair for the remainder of his life.

Marshall himself remained physically active and mentally sharp into old age. He continued to serve on the Court well into his seventies, traveling the judicial circuit and hearing cases despite the rigors of early nineteenth-century travel.

Recognition

Marshall's contributions to American law and governance have been recognized through numerous honors and memorials. He is commemorated through the naming of multiple institutions and locations across the United States. Several high schools bear his name, including schools in Virginia, West Virginia, and other states. Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, was named in his honor, as was the John Marshall School of Law (now known as the UIC John Marshall Law School) in Chicago.

The John Marshall House in Richmond, Virginia, where Marshall lived for 45 years, has been preserved as a historic site and museum. It was designated a National Historic Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Marshall's image has appeared on United States currency, reflecting his status as a figure of national importance.

The Papers of John Marshall project at the College of William & Mary and the University of Virginia has published a comprehensive scholarly edition of Marshall's correspondence, legal opinions, and other writings, ensuring that his legacy remains accessible to scholars and the public.

Legacy

John Marshall died on July 6, 1835, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he had traveled to seek medical treatment. He was 79 years old. According to tradition, the Liberty Bell cracked while tolling in his honor, though this account is disputed by historians. He was buried in Shockoe Hill Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia.

Marshall's 34-year tenure as Chief Justice transformed the Supreme Court from a relatively marginal institution into a co-equal branch of the federal government. Through decisions such as Marbury v. Madison, McCulloch v. Maryland, and Gibbons v. Ogden, he established the foundational principles of American constitutional law: judicial review, federal supremacy, broad construction of congressional powers, and the protection of contractual rights against state interference. These principles have remained central to American jurisprudence for more than two centuries.

Marshall's influence extended beyond the specific holdings of his opinions. His approach to constitutional interpretation—emphasizing the text and structure of the Constitution, the purposes of its framers, and the practical needs of governance—established a model of judicial reasoning that has been invoked by jurists of diverse political persuasions. His practice of issuing unified majority opinions enhanced the institutional authority of the Court and gave its pronouncements a clarity and force that seriatim opinions lacked.

The question of Marshall's role in establishing judicial review has continued to generate scholarly debate. While traditional accounts have credited Marshall with single-handedly creating the doctrine, more recent scholarship has emphasized that the principle of judicial invalidation of unconstitutional statutes was recognized in American legal thought before Marbury and that Marshall's contribution was to articulate and institutionalize a principle that was already part of the constitutional framework.

Nevertheless, Marshall's place in American history is secure. He served during a period in which the basic architecture of American governance was still being constructed, and his decisions helped to determine the shape that architecture would take. The principles he articulated in his opinions continue to be cited, debated, and applied by courts, scholars, and litigants in the twenty-first century.