Thorpe Award Update – 1/08/2010
Due to the high volume of entries in the Eugene S. Thorpe Writing Contest, the judging committee is a little behind schedule. Please be patient and watch this site for news.
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I will be glad to participate in the essay compitition as a young female.But I am not an American citizen. is it ok ?and i have not filled any application form to take part in the essay is there any?
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Grant Marshall…
FEE invites writers to address the following:The conventional wisdom says the 1999-2006 residential [...]…
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The Supreme Court – a Fortress, a Temple
Through United States history many important individuals had great influence on creating the country such as Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and others, but the influence that John Marshall had in American history is incomparable. While it is a fact that in the beginning during the American Revolution Marshall was not one of the founding fathers—people like Jefferson, Franklin, Adams and others who wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the Articles of Confederation in 1777 and the Constitution 1787—the influence that he had in the establishing the Supreme Court places him within this powerful group. His role, throughout his long life and career in the new United States government has, in certain respects, been the most significant as a “founding father” when considered over time.
John Marshall was born in Fauquier County, Virginia in 1755, the oldest of fifteen children that Thomas and Mary Marshall had. His father was not rich, or as Marshall writes, “my father possessed scarcely any fortune, and had received a very limited education” (Smith 21). His father provided him all his education in his early years until Marshall was fourteen. After this he was sent, as he later said, “about a hundred miles away from home” to take classes under the tuition of Mr. Campbell for a year (Smith 21). Marshall was lucky that his father, despite his own lack of education, liked books and encouraged him to read, poetry, history, and law. His father’s intention and preference was to train him for law, but Marshall was more into politics. This period of his studies lasted until 1775 when he joined the army, in the Virginia militia with the rank of lieutenant. Marshall served three years as an officer and fought in the battles of Norfolk, Brandywine, and Monmouth, among others (Allison & Ward).
After the war he returned to Williamsburg to continue his studies, learning the law as his father desired, and after a few months he was admitted to the bar and started practicing law. But because of his own desire to be a part of the political world, he could not stay out of politics; in 1782 he was elected a delegate to the Virginia Assembly and also in 1787 and 1795 (Allison & Ward). During this time he practiced law and was a well-respected attorney and politician. He had a reputation of being a lawyer’s lawyer, and when other lawyers in Richmond had difficulties they would go to Marshall for help (Smith 104). During this time Marshall refused many offers for federal positions, some of which came from President Washington himself, but after buying a lot of land (in Virginia and Kentucky) he felt secure in financial terms and decided to accept the position as the negotiator in a treaty of commerce with France in 1797. Even though no negations occurred because of the XYZ Scandal, Marshall and others who were part of the negotiations were considered heroes in the United States (Wilson).
The next year, with the suggestion of President Washington, he ran for Congress and won, and was seated in the Congress in 1799. There Marshall was one of the main Federalist leaders. In all the important decisions or when the Federalists were divided into factions, Marshall was the person who brought them together (Smith 264). However, Marshall did not serve for very long because in 1800, President Adams proposed the position of Secretary of State to him, which he accepted; however, he did not remain in this position for very long because he was nominated as Chief Justice when Adams lost the presidential election in 1800, and at the same time Chief Justice Ellsworth resigned. In 1801 the Senate unanimously confirmed Marshall as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (Smith 285). This was when John Marshall’s most influential and important political role began.
The Constitutional Convention in 1787 had created a more powerful government with three independent branches, the legislative, the executive, and the judicial with the idea of checks and balances (Brinkley 147). From the beginning the legislature and the executive had clear rules to follow and functioned well, but the judiciary branch was more or less “decorative.” This can be seen in the decision of John Jay to leave his position as the first Chief Justice to become the Governor of New York, feeling that that office was more influential and powerful. After Jay’s resignation many other Chief Justices were appointed, but none of them were able to bring the judiciary branch to the same level as the other two branches.
When Marshall took the job, the Supreme Court was forgotten and lagged far behind other important institutions. With him in this position the new era began for the Supreme Court. Marshall revolutionized the Supreme Court in the manner that the Court made and announces decisions. His most important innovation was to persuade his colleagues to abandon seriatim opinions (courts announcing case outcomes through the separate opinions of each participating judge), therefore making it possible for the Court to speak authoritatively in a single voice (Robertson). Most often in important Constitutional questions that voice belonged to Marshall, and he was almost always the author of the opinions the Supreme Court wrote (Robertson). He was very close to the other Justices, but dominant, too. During his tenure in the Supreme Court, Marshall found himself on the losing side in Ogden v. Saunders (Wilson). Amazingly, this was the first and only case of all the decisions that he participated in.
One of the many cases that he did win is considered the most important because it concerns the status of the Court itself: Marbury v. Madison. In this case the Supreme Court for the first time declared something unconstitutional, and also for the first time established the concept of judicial review, the idea that courts may oversee and nullify the actions of another branch (within its jurisdiction in the United States). This decision helped define the checks and balances of the American form of government (Smith 498). The case had to do with “midnight judges,” as Republicans called those men who President Adams appointed as judges in the last minutes of his presidency. Not all of these orders for appointment were delivered, and one of them was for William Marbury. When Secretary of State Madison refused to deliver this order, Marbury took the case to the Supreme Court. The irony was that Marshall was in charge of delivering this order to Marbury as the Secretary of State under Adams, and when the case went to the Supreme Court Marshall was the Chief Justice (Smith 320). On the 24th of February, 1803, Marshall issued the Court’s opinion. Marshall proceeded in three steps. First, he reviewed the facts of the case, stating that Marbury had the right to receive his commission. Second, Marshall analyzed Marbury’s legal rights and concluded that the Judiciary Act clearly entitled Marbury to the writ of mandamus he requested. Marshall’s third and final question, therefore, was whether the Supreme Court could issue the writ of mandamus.
The Court decided that Marbury’s request for a writ of mandamus (a court order that requires another court, government official, public body, corporation or individual to perform a certain act (dictionary) was based on a law passed by Congress that the Court held to be unconstitutional. The Court decided unanimously that the federal law contradicted the Constitution, and since the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land, it must reign supreme. Through this case, Chief Justice John Marshall established the power of judicial review: the power of the Court not only to interpret the constitutionality of a law or statute, but also to carry out the process and enforce its decision, which is still relevant today. As Chief Justice Marshall said, “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is” (Smith 324).
Ironically, there is nowhere in the Constitution that said that the courts had the power that Chief Justice Marshall declared, but Marshall declared it and his declaration became precedence that has held since 1803, with two principles that this country still uses: first, that when there is a conflict between the Constitution and a federal or state law, the Constitution is supreme; and second that it is the job of the Court to interpret the laws of the United States (Smith 326). This decision was Marshall’s best move. In refusing to confront Jefferson, Marshall had created the new and potent power for the judiciary, judicial review. Despite various issues, such as whether Marshall should have removed himself from the case because of his role as Adams’s Secretary of State, but neither the House nor the Senate commented or criticized Marshall’s decision. With that, as Smith writes in his book John Marshall- Definer of a Nation “the authority of the Supreme Court to overturn an act of Congress went unchallenged, “Marshall’s reasoning was not questioned” (325).
Marbury v. Madison was just the beginning, and there was more to come for Marshall and the Supreme Court. Marshall’s views on state government and national government were strongly influenced by his position as a Federalist, who were for a strong federal government and weaker states in terms of power. The Supreme Court went on to invalidate other federal acts as unconstitutional, in cases such as Fletcher v. Peck (decision: he tied the contract clause to theories of natural law and vested rights that state governments could not violate” (Allison & Ward); McCulloch v. Maryland (decision: “that states could not tax instruments of the national government, such as U.S. banks” (Allison & Ward); and Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward (decision: “that once a state entered into a charter or grant, it could not unilaterally alter the original terms of the agreement” (Allison & Ward). In all these cases and others, Marshall ruled against the states, and by this increasing the power of the national government.
Marshall did encounter some difficulties, most of which he had during Andrew Jackson’s terms as President. It is worth mentioning the cases about the Cherokee Nation. There were three decisions made by the Supreme Court and written by Marshall regarding the Nation. The most important ones were Cherokee v. Georgia and Worcester v. Georgia in which Chief Justice Marshall wrote that Georgia has no right to decide about the Cherokee Nation’s sovereignty, and therefore, the Cherokees should stay in their homeland in Georgia. But this did not help the Cherokee Nation because President Jackson supported Georgia’s decision of removing the Cherokees and said that “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it” (Hundsdorfer). The Court, as history shows, did not have the ability to enforce the decision, and thousands of Cherokee people died along the Trail of Tears as a result of Jacksonian policies regarding Native Peoples.
This was the last time that the Supreme Court’s decisions were, in a sense, “nullified” openly by the states. Overwhelmingly, the crucial system of checks and balances was strengthened by his efforts, and he brought the Judiciary branch to the same level that the other two branches enjoy. Incredibly, Chief Justice Marshall, during his 34 years in his position, participated in more than 1,000 decisions, and authored more than 500 opinions (Wilson). He was in this office while five presidents went by: Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and Jackson (Smith 1). When Marshall gave the Presidential oath to Thomas Jefferson in 1801, the Supreme Court was a fortress under attack. It had become a temple when he gave the Oath of Office to Andrew Jackson in 1829. It is, therefore, right that he should be called one of the Founding Fathers, if not in name like Washington and the others.
10 June 2009 at 7:55 pm