New from DeCapo Press:
John Marshall: The Chief Justice Who Saved the Nation, by
Harlow Giles Unger, independent scholar and the author of nearly a dozen Founding Father biographies. If it's possible to get the non-academic mind interested in John Marshall, this description aims to do it:
A hero in America's war against British tyranny, John Marshall with
his heroics as Chief Justice turned the Supreme Court into a bulwark
against presidential and congressional tyranny and saved American
democracy.
In this startling biography, award-winning author
Harlow Giles Unger reveals how Virginia-born John Marshall emerged from
the Revolutionary War's bloodiest battlefields to become one of the
nation's most important Founding Fathers: America's greatest Chief
Justice. Marshall served his country as an officer, Congressman,
diplomat, and Secretary of State before President John Adams named him
the nation's fourth Chief Justice, the longest-serving in American
history. Marshall transformed the Supreme Court from an irrelevant
appeals court into a powerful branch of government—and provoked the ire
of thousands of Americans who, like millions today, accused him and the
court of issuing decisions that were tantamount to new laws and
Constitutional amendments.
And the Court's critics were right! Marshall admitted as much.
With
nine decisions that shocked the nation, John Marshall and his court
assumed powers to strike down laws it deemed unconstitutional. In doing
so, Marshall's court acted without Constitutional authority, but its
decisions saved American liberty by protecting individual rights and the
rights of private business against tyranny by federal, state, and local
government.
A handful of blurbs are available
here, at the book's Amazon site, but this one seems worth quoting:
New York Post, 7/17/14
“Read. Be proud of our country.”
