John Marshall

John Marshall essentially invented the American Supreme Court. Before him, the Court was a weak institution tacked onto the Constitution. Through three decades as Chief Justice, Marshall transformed it into a co-equal branch of government, establishing judicial review in Marbury v. Madison and defining the constitutional balance between federal and state power. Born in backwater Virginia in 1755, he served in the Revolution, knew Washington and Jefferson personally, and somehow emerged as the most important jurist in American history. James Bradley Thayer, the great Harvard legal scholar, wrote this account at the dawn of the twentieth century when the Constitution itself was still being fought over. The result is a book that captures not just Marshall's legal genius but his wry humor, his political cunning, and his unlikely rise from frontier Virginia to the summit of American law. For anyone who wants to understand where American constitutional power actually comes from, this is where it starts.