Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (165 page)

49
. Gerald Gunther, “Judicial Review,” in Leonard W. Levy, ed.,
Encyclopedia of the American Constitution
(New York, 1986), 1055; Larry D. Kramer,
The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review
(New York, 2004), 150, 155.

50
. For the important distinction between judicial review and judicial supremacy, see Kramer,
The People Themselves
, 139–40, 143, 210.

51
. L. H. LaRue,
Constitutional Law as Fiction: Narrative in the Rhetoric of Authority
(University Park, PA, 1995), 56–69.

52
.
Marbury v. Madison
(1803), in William Cranch, ed.,
U.S. Supreme Court Reports
(Washington, DC, 1804), 177.

53
. TJ to Phillip Mazzei, 28 Nov. 1785, to John Brown Cutting, 2 Oct. 1788,
Papers of Jefferson
, 9: 67–72; 13: 649; to JM, 17 Feb. 1826,
Jefferson: Writings
, 1513–14.

54
. Opinion,
Livingston v. Jefferson
, 5 Dec. 1811,
Papers of Marshall
, 7: 284; Hobson,
The Great Chief Justice: Marshall
, 37.

55
. AH,
Federalist
No. 78.

56
. James Wilson, “Lectures on Law” (1790–1791),
The Works of James Wilson
, ed. Robert Green McCloskey (Cambridge, MA, 1967), 293.

57
. William A. Robinson,
Jeffersonian Democracy in New England
(New Haven, 1916), 120.

58
. For the widespread acceptance of judicial review in the 1790s, see William E. Nelson, “Changing Conceptions of Judicial Review: The Evolution of Constitutional Theory in the States, 1790–1860,”
University of Pennsylvania Law Review
, 120 (1972), 1166, 1169–70; Marcus, “Judicial Review,” in Hoffman and Albert, eds.,
Launching the
“
Extended Republic
,” 25–53; Kramer,
The People Themselves
, 148.

59
. Marcus, “Judicial Review,” in Hoffman and Albert, eds.,
Launching the
“
Extended Republic
,” 36–37.

60
. Charles Warren,
The Supreme Court in United States History
(Boston, 1937), 1: 52–53, 110–11.

61
. Anaton-Hermann Chroust,
The Rise of the Legal Profession in America
(Norman, OK, 1965), 2: 75–77.

62
. Chroust,
Rise of the Legal Profession
, 2: 36–37, 173–223.

63
. Haskins, “Law Versus Politics,”
University of Pennsylvania Law Review
, 130 (1981), 24.

64
. Haskins and Johnson,
Foundations of Power: John Marshall
, 322–31.

65
. Everett Somerville Brown, ed.,
William Plumer’s Memorandum of Proceedings in the United States Senate, 1803–1807
(London, 1923), 269; C. Peter Magrath,
Yazoo: Law and Politics in the New Republic: The Case of Fletcher v. Peck
(New York, 1967).

66
. Carl Brent Swisher,
American Constitutional Development
, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA, 1954), 153–54; Haskins and Johnson,
Foundations of Power: John Marshall
, 597.

67
. Morton J. Horwitz,
The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860
(Cambridge, MA, 1977), 21

68
. Horwitz,
Transformation of American Law
, 23.

69
. William E. Nelson,
Americanization of The Common Law: The Impact of Legal Change on Massachusetts Society, 1760–1830
(Cambridge, MA, 1975), 172; Horwitz,
Transformation of American Law
, 23–26.

70
. On this issue see Gordon S. Wood, “The History of Rights in Early America,” in Barry Alan Shain, ed.,
The Nature of Rights at the American Founding and Beyond
(Charlottesville, 2007), 233–57.

71
.
Marbury v. Madison
(1803), in Cranch, ed.,
U.S. Supreme Court Reports
, 166, 167;

72
. TJ to JM, 15 March 1789,
Republic of Letters
, 587.

73
. St. George Tucker,
Blackstone’s Commentaries: With Notes of Reference to the Constitution and Laws of the Federal Government and of the Commonwealth of Virginia
(Philadelphia, 1803), I, pt. 1, xxv.

74
. Marshall to C. C. Pinckney, 21 Nov. 1802,
Papers of Marshall
, 6: 125.

75
. Marshall to Timothy Pickering, 28 Feb. 1811,
Papers of Marshall
, 7: 270.

76
. Horwitz,
Transformation of American Law
, 31–62. For Marshall’s conception of property, see Richard A. Brisbin Jr., “John Marshall and the Nature of Law in the Early Republic,”
Va. Mag. of Hist. and Biog
., 98 (1990), 62–71; Edward S. Corwin, “The Basic Doctrine of American Constitutional Law,”
Michigan Law Review
, 12 (1914), 247–76.

77
. Haskins, “Law Versus Politics,” 19–20.

78
. When in the Philadelphia Convention James Madison proposed that the federal government be given the explicit power to grant charters of incorporation, the Framers decided to finesse the issue by saying nothing in the Constitution about incorporations out of fear of arousing popular opposition to “mercantile monopolies.” Frank Bourgin,
The Great Challenge: The Myth of Laissez-Faire in the Early Republic
(New York, 1989), 44.

79
.
Pennsylvania Packet
, 2, 10 Sept. 1783, 7, 23 Aug., 25 Sept. 1786; Hendrik Hartog,
Public Property and Private Power: The Corporation of the City of New York in American Law, 1730–1870
(Chapel Hill, 1983), 90.

80
. [James Sullivan],
The Path to Riches: An Inquiry into the Origin and Use of Money; and into the Principles of Stocks and Banks
(Boston, 1792), 37–38, 10, 43.

81
. Thomas Cochran,
Frontiers of Change: Early Industrialization in America
(New York, 1981), 21; Hartog,
Public Property and Private Power
, 153; [Samuel Blodget],
Economica: A Statistical Manual for the United States of America
(Washington, DC, 1806), 17; Johann A. Neem,
Creating a Nation of Joiners: Democracy and Civil Society in Early National Massachusetts
(Cambridge, MA, 2008), 62.

82
. Oscar and Mary Handlin,
Commonwealth: A Study of the Role of Government in the American Economy: Massachusetts, 1774–1861
(Cambridge, MA, 1947, 1969), 106–33; E. Merrick Dodd,
American Business Corporations until 1860, with Special Reference to Massachusetts
(Cambridge, MA, 1954); Ronald E. Seavoy,
The Origins of the American Business Corporation, 1784–1855: Broadening the Concept of Public Service During Industrialization
(Westport, CT, 1982); Pauline Maier, “The Revolutionary Origins of the American Corporation,”
WMQ
, 50 (1993), 68–69.

83
. Sylvia Snowiss, “Text and Principle in John Marshall’s Constitutional Law: the Cases of
Marbury
and
Mccullough
,”
John Marshall Law Review
, 33 (2000), 990.

84
. In 1776 most of the Revolutionary state constitutions did not provide for just compensation for the public taking of private property; but, following the adoption of the Fifth Amendment to the federal Constitution in 1791, this provision was explicitly added in nearly all the constitutions of states subsequently admitted to the Union, and where it was absent from the constitutions of the original states, judicial interpretation often inserted it. J.A.C. Grant, “The ‘Higher Law’ Background of the Law of Eminent Domain,”
Wisconsin Law Review
, 6 (1930–1931), 70.

85
. Mathew Carey, ed.,
Debates and Proceedings of the General Assembly of Pennsylvania
. . . (Philadelphia, 1786), 11–12.

86
. AH, “The Examination,” 23 Feb. 1802,
Papers of Hamilton
, 25: 533. Edward S. Corwin called the protection of vested rights “the basic doctrine of American constitutional law.” Corwin, “The Basic Doctrine of American Constitutional Law,”
Michigan Law Review
, 12 (1914), 247–76.

87
. Harry N. Scheiber, “Public Rights and the Rule of Law in American Legal History,”
California Law Review
, 72 (1984), 217–51; Neem,
Creating a Nation of Joiners
, 58–64; John S. Whitehead,
The Separation of College and State: Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, and Yale, 1776–1876
(New Haven, 1973), 16–21.

88
. R. Kent Newmyer,
Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story: Statesman of the Old Republic
(Chapel Hill, 1985), 127–37; Newmyer,
Marshall and the Heroic Age of the Supreme Court
, 246–50.

89
.
Debates in the Senate of the United States on the Judiciary During the first Session of the Seventh Congress
(Philadelphia, 1802), 39; Snowiss, “Text and Principle in John Marshall’s Constitutional Law,”
John Marshall Law Review
, 33 (2000), 991–92.

90
. TJ to William Plumer, 21 July 1816, in L and B, eds.,
Writings of Jefferson
, 15: 46–47. By the early 1820s Jefferson had come to believe that the federal judiciary, far from being what Hamilton had called “the least dangerous” branch, had “become the most dangerous branch” of the U.S. government, “sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction.” AH,
Federalist
No. 78; TJ to M. Coray, 31 Oct. 1823, in L and B, eds.,
Writings of Jefferson
, 15: 486–87.

91
. Sandra F. Vanburkleo, “‘The Paws of Banks’: The Origins and Significance of Kentucky’s Decision to Tax Federal Bankers, 1818–1820,”
JER
, 9 (1989), 480–87; Sandra F. VanBurkleo, “‘That Our Pure Republican Principles Might Not Wither’: Kentucky’s Relief Crisis and the Pursuit of Moral Justice, 1818–1826” (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1988),
ch. 6
.

92
. L. Ray Gunn,
The Decline of Authority: Public Economic Policy and Political Development in New York, 1800–1860
(Ithaca, 1988).

93
. William J. Novak,
The People’s Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America
(Chapel Hill, 1996), 15, 88.

1
. Joel Barlow,
Oration, Delivered at Washington, July Fourth, 1809; at the Request of the Democratic Citizens of the District of Columbia
(Washington, DC, 1809), 3–6, 9.

2
. Donald J. D’Elia, “Dr. Benjamin Rush and the American Medical Revolution,” American Philosophical Society,
Proc
., 110 (1966), 70, 101.

3
. Jacqueline S. Reinier, “Rearing the Republican Child: Attitudes and Practices in Post-Revolutionary Philadelphia,”
WMQ
, 39 (1982), 155.

4
. In a Number of Extraordinary Novels Written in the 1790s the writer Charles Brockden Brown explored what the unreliability of sense impressions could mean for the spread of “falsehood and dissimulation” in America. Colin Jeffery Morris, “To ‘Shut Out the World’: Political Alienation and the Privatized Self in the Early Life and Works of Charles Brockden Brown, 1776–1794,”
JER
, 24 (2004), 624.

5
. Simeon Doggett,
A Discourse on Education
(1797), in Frederick Rudolph, ed.,
Essays on Education in the Early Republic
(Cambridge, MA, 1965), 155–56.

6
. James Axtell,
The School upon a Hill: Education and Society in Colonial New England
(New Haven, 1974), 184.

7
. William Smith,
The History of the Province of New York
, ed. Michael Kammen (Cambridge, MA, 1972), 194.

8
. Donald Tewksbury,
The Founding of American Colleges and Universities Before the Civil War
(New York, 1932).

9
. BR, “Education Agreeable to a Republican Form of Government” (1786), in Dagobert D. Runes, ed.,
The Selected Writings of Benjamin Rush
(New York, 1947), 98–99, 92; Lawrence A. Cremin,
American Education: The National Experience, 1783–1876
(New York, 1980), 116–17.

10
. TJ said as much in a letter to George Wythe, 13 Aug. 1786,
Papers of Jefferson
, 10: 244.

11
. Dumas Malone,
Jefferson the Virginian
(Boston, 1948), 282–83.

12
. Carl F. Kaestle,
Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780–1860
(New York, 1983), 33–35.

13
. Noah Webster,
On the Education of Youth in America
(1790), in Rudolph, ed.,
Essays on Education
, 59.

14
. BR, “Of the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic” (1798), in Runes, ed.,
Selected Writings of Rush
, 90, 88.