A Federalist in Jeffersonian Clothing

...If John Adams "was prepared to seek a declaration of war" against France in 1789, Marshall's opposition may well have caused the President to retreat...

...Moreover, Marshall's resolution of two intensely partisan disputes early in his reign convinced most Americans that compromise, not confrontation, was the Chief Justice's style...

...Reviewed by Isidore Silver Professor of Law, John Jay College Leonard Baker's massive and important biography of our greatest Justice places its author squarely in the middle of the ongoing consensus/conflict debate about American history...

...The innumerable battles between the two eminent Virginians, John Marshall and Thomas Jefferson, he suggests, were based largely on personality and temperament, not programs...

...Baker terms the decision "one of civilization's finest hours, one of mankind's greatest achievements," and in fact the Republicans refrained from condemning it...

...If the Federalists honestly thought the Jeffersonian Republicans were Jacobins, Marshall's resistance to using the Alien and Sedition Acts against the "pro-French" party must stand as a monument to great integrity under pressure...

...One month later, Marshall handed down an anti-Jeffersonian decision in the historic Marbury v. Madison case, which established judicial review on the constitutionality of legislation...

...Indeed, Marshall's spirit of reconciliation goes back to the period before he was named to the bench...

...Under Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States from 1801-1835, the Supreme Court pursued a relatively straightforward policy of protecting nascent capitalism and supporting nationalism over states' rights-despite the fact that after 1810 most of the Justices were Jeffersonian Republicans...

...Ironically enough, Baker shows Marshall was the Jeffersonian ideal of the self-made man...

...For the political Federalist was also a social Republican-shabbily dressed, inveterately friendly, open, humble...

...Subsequently, Marshall recognized, albeit with great qualification, the claim of Executive Privilege...

...And though Baker may be too sanguine about his subject's devotion to "Law," underemphasizing the partisan dimensions of Marshall's decisions, such generosity merely demonstrates the difficulty any biographer has in being less than eulogistic about this towering statesman, this remarkable person...

...Thus the Federalist judge and the Jeffersonian President, however violent their rhetoric, rejected the extreme demands of their most vociferous political allies and succeeded in reaching a modus vivendi...

...Although he is not a professional historian, Baker clearly stands with those who believe the country's past is fundamentally a record of shared values and common ends rather than one of constant struggle between competing groups...

...Yet, whatever Jefferson's reservations or complaints prior to and following his Presidency, he was, while the occupant of the White House, no less committed to a broad, national vision than his Federalist judicial adversary...

...The Court refused to declare the Judiciary Act of 1802 unconstitutional, thereby depriving some 60 Federal judges of their jobs and pleasing the Republicans...

...politics was subordinated to the more general goal of nation-building...

...Even Marshall's landmark rulings in the Burr treason trial, including his subpoenaing of Jefferson, were not particularly offensive to Republicans, who believed that government should be limited, and that the President had no absolute right to defy court commands...