John Marshall: Complete Constitutional Decisions

Excerpt from John Complete Constitutional Decisions

Marshall's decisions. This may seem to be a strong ex pression, but it is absolutely true. To all persons, there fore, lay or professional, who feel an interest in the science of law, of jurisprudence or of government, and in the workings of republican institutions for over a century on a theater of more than imperial extent and grandeur and on the largest scale ever exhibited to man kind, the Opinions here published have an intrinsic im~ portance distinctively and exclusively their own.

Of few works can it truly be affirmed that they are equally adapted to popular and professional use. But this is undeniably true of Chief Justice Marshall's con stitutional judgments. Many of the greatest and most luminous of his constitutional cpinions contain scarcely a reference to adjudged cases or to the authority of precedents, for there were none, and the conclusions reached do not depend upon technical learning or discus sions. They may be fully understood by any intelligent person. As Dr. Johnson would have phrased it, each decision is a colossus hewn from a rock, not figures carved on cherry stones; and on reading these opinions one has the satisfaction of seeing each successive stroke of the Titan which gradually evolved the massive and original work that he beholds.

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