John Marshall

Fifteen children shared a two-room log cabin in the Virginia backcountry, and John Marshall was the eldest of them. His father surveyed land for Lord Fairfax, which paid well enough to keep a Scottish deacon in the house as a live-in tutor in exchange for his board. That, one year of actual schooling, and a great deal of Blackstone and Alexander Pope was the whole of his education. He enlisted alongside his father in 1775, fought at Brandywine, wintered at Valley Forge, and made captain by July 1778. Furloughed in 1780, he sat in on George Wythe's law lectures at William and Mary for a few months and was admitted to the Virginia bar the same year.

He took the judicial oath on February 4, 1801, and did not give the seat up for 34 years and five months, which no successor has come near. He stopped the Court from issuing opinions one justice at a time and made it speak in a single voice, usually his own. He also wrote a five-volume life of Washington, the first biography of an American president ever published, and presided over Aaron Burr's treason trial, ruling most of the government's evidence inadmissible. BriefHistory has the opinions and the architecture they built. What follows is the rest of him.

His father's wedding gift in 1783 was a man named Robin Spurlock, who ran the Richmond household for 52 years. He took some slavery cases pro bono early on and in 1796 freed a man he had bought. He also wrote seven of the Marshall Court's 14 decisions on slavery and sided against the enslaved in all seven. In the 1825 Antelope case he conceded that slavery violated natural law and left about a third of the ship's captives in bondage anyway. How many people he owned is contested. Paul Finkelman puts the number in the hundreds and calls him an active trader. Charles Hobson, who edited his papers, says that overstates the record. Marshall's will offered the 78-year-old Spurlock a choice: freedom if he left Virginia without his enslaved daughter Agnes, or naming which Marshall child would own him.

He wrote his own tombstone. It gives his parents, his wife, his wedding date and his death date, and it does not mention the Supreme Court. Everyone else made up the difference. Marshall, Michigan took his name in 1830, the first of dozens of towns and counties. A bronze Marshall in judicial robes went up beside the Capitol in 1884 and stands inside the Supreme Court building now. Then on May 20, 2021, the John Marshall Law School in Chicago announced it was becoming the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law, citing newly surfaced research on Marshall as a slave owner and trader. The doctrines have not moved. The name has.

John Marshall's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Marbury v. Madison case
  The only act of Congress the Marshall Court ever struck down 1803
• The Life of George Washington book
  Five volumes, and the first biography of an American president ever published 1804
• McCulloch v. Maryland case
  Implied powers, and no state taxation of federal institutions 1819
• Gibbons v. Ogden case
  Federal authority over interstate navigation 1824
• The Antelope case
  Slavery is against natural law, he wrote, and left a third of the captives enslaved 1825
• Worcester v. Georgia case
  Georgia had no authority over Cherokee land. Jackson refused to enforce it. 1832

• 1780 aged ~25 Reads law under George Wythe and is admitted to the Virginia bar He had been furloughed from the Continental Army after five years of service.
• January 3, 1783 aged 27 Marries Mary Willis Ambler in Richmond
• 1788 aged ~33 Works with James Madison to carry Virginia's ratification of the Constitution The convention voted 89 to 79 in favor.
• October 1797 aged 42 Arrives in France as an envoy and is asked for bribes The XYZ Affair made him famous at home.
• February 4, 1801 aged 45 Takes the oath as chief justice while still serving as Secretary of State He held both offices until Adams left on March 4.
• February 24, 1803 aged 47 Decides Marbury v. Madison
• 1807 aged ~52 Presides over Aaron Burr's treason trial and rules most of the evidence out Burr was acquitted. Jefferson attacked Marshall for it.
• March 3, 1832 aged 76 Rules for the Cherokee in Worcester v. Georgia Jackson declined to enforce the decision and Georgia kept the missionaries in prison.
• July 6, 1835 aged 79 Dies in Philadelphia, unaware that his eldest son had died a week earlier Thomas Marshall was struck by a brick from a lightning-hit chimney in Baltimore while travelling to his father's bedside. The family kept it from him.

• John Adams 1735–1826
  Second President and key Founding Father who helped secure independence and shaped early American diplomacy. appointed by
• Thomas Jefferson 1743–1826
  Principal author of the Declaration of Independence and third President who oversaw the Louisiana Purchase. lifelong adversary
• Aaron Burr 1756–1836
  Third vice president who killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel and was later tried for treason. tried for treason before him
• Andrew Jackson 1767–1845
  Seventh President whose populist policies and Indian Removal Act left a deeply contested legacy. defied his ruling
• James Madison 1751–1836
  Fourth President and Father of the Constitution who co-authored the Federalist Papers. named as defendant in Marbury
• Earl Warren 1891–1974
  Chief justice whose Court transformed civil rights, voting, representation, and criminal procedure. used the power he built