John Marshall

This 2014 essay discussed the issue of same-sex marriage in the context of judicial review principles.  Although the U.S. Supreme Court held that same-sex marriage was a constitutional right in 2015, the reflections in the paper on judicial review were not modified by that decision.

The new designs for the US Paper Money between 1914 and 1918: Federal Reserve Notes and Federal Reserve Bank Notes during the Word War I. Contents:
BEFORE THE FED, THE FED, THE NEW NOTES, 12 BANK SEALS, THE NEW TRADITION, 2 TREASURY SEALS, DATES, FIVE-DOLLAR BILL, TEN-DOLLAR BILL, TWENTY-DOLLAR BILL, FIFTY-DOLLAR BILL, ONE HUNDRED-DOLLAR BILL, ONE-DOLLAR BILL, TWO-DOLLAR BILL, $500 BILL, $1,000 BILL, $5,000 BILL, $10,000 BILL, 4 AUTHORIZATIONS ON THE “FED” PAPER MONEY (1914-1918), FINAL WORDS.

In recent decades the term "treason" has been bandied about as a political weapon by various media figures and their followers in the United States, including in bestselling book titles.  These people allege that their political opponents are guilty of treason because they have allegedly departed from the views of the late eighteenth-century US Founders.  Some firebrands have called for the prosecution and execution of such alleged traitors under the Treason Clause of the US Constitution.  However, such opinionmakers fail to understand what the Founders meant when they formulated the Treason Clause of the US Constitution.  While invoking the Founders, they are themselves ignorant of what the Founders actually said.  The present essay provides a brief refresher course.

Before John Marshall the Supreme Court was the backwater of the national government. John Adams lone term in office was very memorable for the Supreme Court. He placed three justices on the bench, when the court had a membership of only 6. The judicial appointee was Bushrod Washington in 1798, the second was Alfred Moore in 1799 and lastly John Marshall in 1800. John Marshall was a former member of Congress and Adam’s own secretary of State. John Marshall headed the court for 34 yearsand is considered the best chief justice in the court’s history.

By the time Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as President of the United States in March 1861, eight Southern States had seceded from the Union. In his inaugural address, Lincoln appealed to his "fellow citizens" to settle their differences peacefully, however, he stated that the Union was "perpetual" and "organic."

However, the Constitution of the United States was ambiguous about whether it was a union of the people as a whole or a union of states that ratified it. The issue for came to the fore in 1798 with the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, penned by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, respectively, argued that the Constitution was a compact between the states, and the states had the power to judge whether an act of Congress was constituional or not. The matter was supposedly settled by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall in the 1803 case of Marbury v. Madison.

However, the issue surfaced again during the War of 1812, when New Englanders opposed to the war met in Hartford, Connecticut, and passed a series of resolutions and hintied at taking unspecified further actions if their resolutions were ignored. Fortunately, the war ended before they had to resort to any such measures.

It is was issues of protective tariffs and the exension of slavery to the western territories that finally led to the secession of Southern States from the Union. A second generation of American leaders debated these issues led by Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina. Henry Clay of Kentucky proposed an "American System" of internal improvements, a protective tariff, and a national banking system that he hoped would integrate the sections of the country into a single national economy. He allso the Missouri Compromise as a way to settle the issue of the extension of slavery to the west yet maintaining the balance between slave and free states.

After the Mexican War the issue arose again over whether slavery would be allowed in the new territories in the Southwest conquered from Mexico. In this case, Stephen Douglas of Illinois came forward with another compromise in 1850 based on the pirnciple of "popular sovereignty." However, this compromise was upset by the Dred Scott decision in 1857 that asserted the principle that slaveowners could bring their property in slaves to all parts of the country. Abraham Lincoln made a national reputation for himself by debating Douglas on these issues.

Lincoln opposed the extension of slavery to the territories, but said he did not have the power to abolish slavery where it already existed. Nevertheless, his election as president in 1860 convinced the South that the balance between free and slave states would be upset, which prompted secession. Lincoln maintained that secession was illegal and thus the Southern States were in "rebellion." However, after the war there was the question of whether the Confederate states could simply resume their ante-bellum status during Reconstruction. The legal matter was finally settled by the Supreme Court case of White v. Texas in 1869, stating that the secession was illegal. But the moral issue also was raised by Lincoln, when he states revolution was only justified when its cause was "morally justifiable."

The earlier version had 28 views by the time I deleted it--and replaced it with this.

The second of my "Option II" papers. Option II was an alternative to doing comprehensive exams. Both options were requirements for entering the doctoral program. My supervisors were Cass Sunstein and Michael McConnell and/or Stephen Holmes. In any case, McConnell read, graded, and the commented on the paper.

My defense of this paper was held on Dec. 13, 1988 before professors Cass Sunstein, Stephen Holmes, and Gerald Rosenberg and graduate student Ricardo Barrera.