No man did more to shape the judicial landscape of America than John Marshall, who led the Supreme Court for more than three decades and hand-crafted scores of decisions that affect us still today. When he was appointed chief justice in 1801, the court was an orphan branch of government with little authority, holding its sessions in spare committee rooms and boarding houses. Marshall’s tenure would transform it.
In “Without Precedent,” Joel Richard Paul, a professor at the University of California’s Hastings Law School in San Francisco, has crafted a scholarly but highly readable and often entertaining chronicle that embeds Marshall among the leading lights of the nation’s founding generation, humanizing him along the way.
Marshall’s modest origins hardly hinted at the illustrious career that was in store. Born in 1755, the future chief justice grew up on what was then the Virginia frontier, the eldest of 15 children who lived packed into a two-room log cabin. His father worked as a farmer and surveyor. In contrast to the tutored sons of Virginia’s elite, young John was largely self-taught. He received only a single year of formal education and later six weeks of training in the law under the eminent legal teacher George Wythe.
As a rifleman during the Revolutionary War, Marshall endured the horrific winter at Valley Forge, where he came to know George Washington. Washington sensed Marshall’s natural intellect and appointed him a military judge advocate. After the war, Marshall established a law practice in Richmond and was elected to the Virginia legislature, where he soon became the star of its Federalist minority.
