John Marshall and the Constitution, a Chronicle of the Supreme CourtCorwin, Edward Samuel
History
John Marshall and the Constitution, a Chronicle of the Supreme Court
Corwin, Edward Samuel
Constitutional history -- United States; Marshall, John, 1755-1835; United States. Supreme Court
Briefer accounts of Marshall covering his entire career will be found in
Henry Flanders's Lives and Times of the Chief Justices of the Supreme
Court (1875) and Van Santvoord's Sketches of the Lives, Times, and
Judicial Services of the Chief Justices of the Supreme Court (1882). Two
excellent brief sketches are J. B. Thayer's John Marshall (1901) in the
Riverside Biographical Series, and W. D. Lewis's essay in the second
volume of The Great American Lawyers, 8 vols. (Philadelphia, 1907), of
which he is also the editor. The latter is particularly happy in its
blend of the personal and legal, the biographical and critical. A. B.
Magruder's John Marshall (1898) in the American Statesman Series falls
considerably below the general standard maintained by that excellent
series.
The centennial anniversary of Marshall's accession to the Supreme Bench
was generally observed by Bench and Bar throughout the United States,
and many of the addresses on the great Chief Justice's life and judicial
services delivered by distinguished judges and lawyers on that occasion
were later collected by John F. Dillon and published in John Marshall,
Life, Character, and Judicial Services, 3 vols. (Chicago, 1903). In
volume XIII of the Green Bag will be found a skillfully constructed
mosaic biography of Marshall drawn from these addresses.
The most considerable group of Marshall's letters yet published are
those to Justice Story, which will be found in the Massachusetts
Historical Society Proceedings, Second Series, volume XIV, pp. 321-60.
These and most of the Chief Justice's other letters which have thus far
seen the light of day will be found in J. E. Oster's Political and
Economic Doctrines of John Marshall (New York, 1914). Here also will be
found a copy of Marshall's will, of the autobiography which he prepared
in 1818 for Delaplaine's Repository but which was never published there,
and of his eulogy of his wife. The two principal sources of Marshall's
anecdotes are the Southern Literary Messenger, volume II, p. 181 ff.,
and Henry Howe's Historical Collections of Virginia (Charleston, 1845).
Approaching the value of sources are Joseph Story's Discourse upon the
Life, Character, and Services of the Hon. John Marshall (1835) and
Horace Binney's Eulogy (1835), both of which were pronounced by personal
friends shortly after Marshall's death and both of which are now
available in volume III of Dillon's compilation, cited above. The value
of Marshall's Life of Washington as bearing on the origin of his own
point of view in politics was noted in the text (Chapter VIII).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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