John Marshall biography

Synopsis

(born Sept. 24, 1755, near Germantown [now Midland], Va.—died July 6, 1835, Philadelphia, Pa.) fourth chief justice of the United States and principal founder of the U.S. system of constitutional law. As perhaps the Supreme Court's most influential chief justice, Marshall was responsible for constructing and defending both the foundation of judicial power and the principles of American federalism. The first of his great cases in more than 30 years of service was Marbury v. Madison (1803), which established the Supreme Court's right to expound constitutional law and exercise judicial review by declaring laws unconstitutional. His defense of federalism was articulated in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), which upheld the authority of Congress to create the Bank of the United States and declared unconstitutional the right of a state to tax an instrument of the federal government. In his ruling on McCulloch, Marshall at once explained the authority of the court to interpret the constitution, the nature of federal-state relations inherent in a federal system of government, and the democratic nature of both the U.S. government and its governing. During his tenure as chief justice, Marshall participated in more than 1,000 decisions, writing more than 500 of them himself.

Youth

John Marshall was born in a log cabin and was the eldest of 15 children of Thomas Marshall, a sheriff, justice of the peace, and land surveyor who came to own some 200,000 acres (80,000 ha) of land in Virginia and Kentucky and who was a leading figure in Prince William county (from 1759 Fauquier county), Va., and Mary Keith Marshall, a clergyman's daughter whose family was related to both the Randolphs and the Lees (two of Virginia's most prominent families). Marshall's childhood and youth were spent in the near-frontier region of Fauquier county, and he later lived in the Blue Ridge mountain area where his father had acquired properties. His schooling was primarily provided by his parents, supplemented only by the instruction afforded by a visiting clergyman who lived with the family for about a year and by a few months of slightly more formal training at an academy in Westmoreland county.

Early career

When political debate with England was followed by armed clashes in 1775, Marshall, as lieutenant, joined his father in a Virginia regiment of minutemen and participated in the first fighting in that colony. Joining the Continental Army in 1776, Marshall served under George Washington for three years in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, his service including the harsh winter of 1777–78 at Valley Forge. He eventually rose to the rank of captain, and when the term of service of his Virginia troops expired in 1779, Marshall returned to Virginia and thereafter saw little active service prior to his discharge in 1781.

Marshall's only formal legal training was a brief course of lectures he attended in 1780 at William and Mary College given by George Wythe, an early advocate of judicial review. Licensed to practice law in August 1780, Marshall returned to Fauquier county and was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1782 and 1784. Attending the sessions of the legislature in the state capital at Richmond, he established a law practice there and made the city his home after his marriage to Mary Ambler in January 1783.

For the next 15 years Marshall's career was marked by increasing stature at the bar of Virginia and within Virginia politics. Although by 1787 he had not achieved a public position that would have sent him as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, he was an active, if junior, proponent of the new Constitution of the United States in the closely contested fight for ratification. That year Marshall was elected to the legislature that would take the first step toward ratification by issuing a call for a convention in Virginia to consider ratifying; he was also elected a delegate to the convention. His principal effort on the floor of the convention was, perhaps prophetically, a defense of the judiciary article. He then used his acknowledged popularity to gain or build the narrow margin by which Virginia's ratification of the Constitution was won.

Shortly after the new constitution