Book Review

Canada and the United States

This book is must reading for constitutional and social historians; political scientists of quite different approaches to the Supreme Court, constitutional law, and American political and legal development; and a wide range of law school teachers and scholars. It will stimulate them to question their methods of inquiry and more thoughtfully consider the relationship of law, politics, and history. R. Kent Newmyer clearly appreciates, but his evidence sometimes questions, the place of law and principle in the development of constitutional law, the United States, and, most importantly, John Marshall's place in that development. This book is superb because it provides a deep and nuanced understanding of how Marshall's life influenced his jurisprudence and how his political acumen in supporting the rule of law and principled adjudication helped establish the Supreme Court as a constitutional venue "for all seasons." It is less clear, however, that his jurisprudence, if understood as part of his historical era as Newmyer emphasizes, establishes Marshall as a judge "for all seasons."	1
Newmyer has two primary objectives in writing this masterful and important biography. The first is to explain Marshall's jurisprudence as a product of his life and times. His goal, he writes, "is not merely to sum up the legal and institutional accomplishments of Marshall but to capture something of the nuanced texture of his reasoning, the complexity of his mature jurisprudence, and the affinities and tensions between his system of law and the transformative age in which he lived" (p. xvi).	2
With regard to his second objective, Newmyer writes, "For reasons I hope to show, John Marshall remains America's representative jurist: a judge for all seasons" (p. xvi). Newmyer is more successful in meeting the first objective than the second.	3
With regard to the first objective, Newmyer examines, in stunning detail, Marshall's separate opinions as part of an unfolding exposition of working principles of law. The author emphasizes the impact of England's common law tradition on Marshall, on the development of American constitutional law, and on our vision of judging. Newmyer provides a coherent decade-by-decade account of Marshall, from the American Revolution through Marshall as Chief Justice in the 1820s and 1830s. Marshall sought to protect the Constitution as a beacon of national constitutionalism from the resurgent forces of democratic nationalism and states' rights theory and to establish the Supreme Court as the final interpreter of that document.	4
At the core of Newmyer's analysis is the relationship between Marshall's decisions and his past as a backwoods Virginia lawyer, sometimes legislator, who worked his way into the social and professional elite, litigated property and contract disputes among them, and drew on English common law principles and the federal courts for their settlement. It is in light of this background that Newmyer explains Marshall's faith in a nationalizing Supreme Court and federal court system that could apply the rule of law under a written Constitution whose primary objective was to limit the negative effects of emerging party politics, localism, and states' rights on the development of a national (really international) economic system and government. Marshall felt this was needed to protect the nation's interests at home and abroad and the republican (not democratic) principles at the core of the Constitution.	. . .