Tag: John Marshall

Burr versus Jefferson versus Marshall

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The president accused his former vice president of treason and tussled with a Supreme Court justice. Mark Twain once quipped, “Truth is stranger than Fiction . . . because Fiction is obliged to stick to the possibilities; Truth isn’t.” Twain could well have been writing about the trial of Aaron Burr. The bare-bones facts surrounding[…]

The Chief Justice Who Elevated the Supreme Court into a Co-Equal Branch of Government

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Before John Marshall, the Supreme Court had been a constitutional afterthought. No one in the founding generation left a more lasting imprint on American government and law than Chief Justice John Marshall. We remember Washington’s leadership, Jefferson’s eloquence, and Franklin’s wit, but Marshall breathed life into the Constitution, elevated the judiciary, and defended the federal[…]