John Marshall and the Creation of a National Government

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, 200 years after his appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States, John Marshall is an iconic figure. Albert Beveridge, his first great biographer, observed: “He has become a kind of mythical being, endowed with virtues and wisdom not of this earth. He appears to us as a gigantic figure looming, indistinctly, out of the mists of the past.”1 He holds special meaning for us who are lawyers, judges, and students of the law. He is our Founder. For many of us, he is our hero. He is the one who showed that law—no less than war, legislation, administration, or popular leadership—is central to the creation of a national government, and even to the creation of a people. I doubt there is a judge—or wannabe judge—in the country who does not, in some way, try to take John Marshall as his model.