By Chief Justice Fuller*

     It is not as a Revolutionary soldier, member of the Virginia Convention and Assembly, and of Congress, Envoy to France and Secretary of State, that we think of John Marshall but as the great magistrate who, for thirty years, held practically unquestioned sway as the head of the Supreme Court of the United States. During the period of his incumbency, Kenyon, Ellenborough, Tenterden, and Denman were successively Chief Justices of England; and Eldon, Erskine, Lyndhurst, and Brougham were Lord Chancellors. Judge Marshall had been a soldier as had Erskine and, for a short time, a member of the cabinet, as was Ellenborough; but no comparison can be instituted between him and either of his eminent contemporaries. His intellect exhibited the combination of force and lucidity, which were characteristic of Lord Lyndhurst, but the latter was more of a politician than a statesman whereas Marshall, if he had remained in political life, would have been more of a statesman than a politician.

     Judge Marshall has been compared to Holt and Mansfield. Undoubtedly Chief Justice Holt, in applying the old system to the wants of a new state of society, may be said to have dealt in constructive jurisprudence. To him is due the regulation of negotiable securities and the settlement of many questions pertaining to the law of contracts, and Lord Mansfield may be truly said to be the founder of the commercial law of England. But, though Holt and Mansfield contributed to the expansion of a system of constitutional law, yet the creation of such a system was especially the achievement of Marshall.

     In mere judicial learning he has been surpassed by some, but in the power of pure reasoning by none. His colleague, Mr. Justice Story, eminent as a judge, an author and a teacher, will be chiefly remembered for those elaborate works which led Lord Campbell to refer to him in the House of Lords as the first of living writers on the law, and in which he displayed a prodigality of learning in every branch of jurisprudence. This the Chief Justice had not, but he possessed, to a degree rarely, if ever equalled, the faculty of detecting at once the very point of which the disposition of the controversy depended and resolving every argument into its ultimate principles and then applying them to the decision of the case. It is even asserted at the close of one of his admirable opinions, Judge Marshall said: "These seem to me to be the conclusions to which we are conducted by the reason and of the law. Brother Story will furnish the authorities."

     While Marshall’s fame will chiefly depend upon his masterly treatment of constitutional questions, yet it is not to be inferred that he was not eminent in other departments. The late Chief Justice Waite well says:

     "He kept himself at the front on all constitutional law, and consequently his masterhand is seen in every case which involved that subject, at the same time, he and his co-workers, whose names some of them are almost as familiar as his own, were engaged in laying deep and strong the foundation on which the jurisprudence of this country has since been built. Hardly a day now pas[s]es in the court he so dignified and adorned without reference to some decision of his time as establishing a principle which, from that day to this, has been accepted as undoubted law."

     We see him in the discharge of all his duties of exalted office in the walks of private life, with a buoyant spirit, a playful temperament and with a zest which he showed in enjoying the pleasures of the table or club. Numerous personal incidents are narrated in illustration of the simplicity of his character; but there is none more striking than the fact that the head of the most powerful tribunal on earth never retired to rest without repeating the Lord’s Prayer and the lines commencing "Now I lay me down to sleep." As the years pass, the fame of this great man continues to shine with undiminished lustre and so will continue until the firmament from whence beam the glories of Tribonian and D’Aguesseau, of Hale and Mansfield is rolled together like a scroll.

* From the Papers of Melville Weston Fuller, Box 15, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division. (back)