The use that the future makes of the past: John Marshall's greatness and its lessons for today's Supreme Court Justices.

• Author: Balkin, Jack M.

John Marshall's greatness rests on a relatively small number of Supreme Court opinions, of which the most famous are Marbury v. Madison, (1) McCulloch v. Maryland, (2) and Gibbons v. Ogden. (3) Beyond these are a number of less famous but also important cases, including his opinions in the Native American cases, (4) Fletcher v. Peck, (5) and Dartmouth College v. Woodward. (6)

What makes Marshall a great Justice? One feature is certainly his institutional role in making the U.S. Supreme Court much more important to American politics than it had been previously. That is a function, however, of the sorts of cases that were brought before the Court, and of the opinions he chose to write. Marshall was also important as an early intellectual leader of the Court, as opposed to being merely its Chief Justice. That, too, is a function of the opinions he wrote.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS COUNT

Thus, Marshall's greatness tends to revolve around his opinions. What exactly did those opinions do? They often involved the initial construction of a piece of constitutional text. The initial gloss on a portion of the Constitution offers a judge the opportunity for the creation of new doctrinal categories that will prove lasting. That is clearly the case with Marshall. Many doctrines or catch phrases, including "political question," "domestic dependent nations," and the doctrine of implied powers, either begin with or are made famous by Marshall. It is important to note, however, that almost any initial gloss on a piece of constitutional text is likely to have a disproportionate influence on the later development of interpretations of that piece of text. That is because subsequent interpretations normally rely on the initial interpretation. Even if they disagree with or distinguish it, they must take the initial gloss into account. Interpretative traditions are path-dependent, and the later direction of the path often depends heavily on the initial first steps.

In particular, the initial gloss on a piece of constitutional text can either cause the text to become a wellspring of further interpretations, or, as in the case of Justice Miller's initial reading of the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, (7) it can essentially make the constitutional text irrelevant and thus forestall virtually all litigation concerning it. All other things being equal, the first approach is likely to be the more influential and honored in the long run. That is because lawyers will tend to focus on those parts of the Constitution about which they can litigate. All things being equal, Justices tend to be more highly regarded if lawyers spend a lot of time thinking and arguing about their opinions. Thus, the opinions of a Justice who makes a portion of the Constitution litigable will inevitably draw more attention than the opinions of a Justice who makes a portion of the Constitution effectively a dead letter. I suspect that Justice Miller's importance stems largely from the fact that he was the first to interpret the Fourteenth Amendment, but that he would have been much more important and much more famous if he had not squashed the life out of the Privileges or Immunities Clause and, instead, had created a gloss that future lawyers could fight over.

PICKING THE RIGHT TOPICS

This brings me to a second feature of Marshall's opinions. Marshall wrote on subjects that were of immense importance to the America of his day: contractual liberties, the rights of settlers versus Native Americans, and the powers of the national government vis-a-vis the states. And, of course, Marbury v. Madison is a case about the struggle between the two major political parties of Marshall's day--the Federalists and the Republicans--as well as a case about the relative powers of the judiciary vis-a-vis the Congress. All other things being equal, a Justice who hurls the Court into major political controversies is more likely to be regarded as controversial, and hence, almost by definition, more talked about and discussed.

Marshall's choices in this respect were impeccable if his goals were to have great influence in his own day and lasting influence in the future. It is important to recognize that in the 1800s the Supreme Court's docket was not essentially discretionary as it is today. Hence, Marshall could not pick and choose his topics; rather, he had to take advantage of whatever opportunities were presented by the cases that came to the Court. Marshall did not squander his opportunities. His initial glosses on most of the constitutional texts he construed were not like Justice Miller's in that they cut off future development. Marbury v. Madison, which confirmed the power of judicial review, opened a wide swath of possibilities for future constitutional development, as did McCulloch and Gibbons. All of these opinions raised more questions than they answered.

Of course, there is no guarantee that what is a central topic of concern in 1820 will continue to be an important question two hundred years later. The question of contractual rights raised in cases like Fletcher v. Peck, Dartmouth College v. Woodward, and Sturges v. Crowninshield, (8) was quite important in Marshall's own day, but the Contracts Clause has largely receded from importance in constitutional law due to significant changes in political and economic aspects of American life. Nevertheless, the more controversial and central the topics that a Justice takes on, the more likely it is that he or she will hit upon something that is lasting. In Marshall's case, he hit the jackpot in Marbury, McCulloch, and Gibbons. Judicial review, the scope of national powers, federalism, and Congress's commerce power have turned out to be perennial topics of concern in American constitutional law. Obviously Marshall's own initial interpretations had something to do with this, but one suspects that even if he had not written his opinions so broadly, these topics would have been rather important in American politics.

A similar phenomenon applies to Justice Story. His opinion in Prigg v. Pennsylvania (9) construed the Fugitive Slave Clause, a dead letter today. It was his opinions in cases like Martin v. Hunter's Lessee, (10) as well as his commentaries on the Constitution, (11) that helped to establish his reputation. It is important to note that the converse phenomenon is not always true. A Justice who writes an opinion about a topic that was considered relatively unimportant in his or her own day but later becomes quite significant may get some boost in reputation, but not as great as when the topic is a continuing source of concern.

Story's example raises another important factor--longevity. Longevity bolsters a Justice's reputation for any number of reasons. The longer one stays on the Court, the more opportunities for writing on a wide variety of topics, and hence, the greater the chances for garnering the attention of present and future generations. In addition, longevity gives a Justice more of a chance to develop an army of supporters and allies who will praise his or her name (I will say more about the importance of a coterie of admirers in a moment). It is hard to say which Justices were most hurt by lack of longevity, but a list of likely candidates would include Abe Fortas, Arthur Goldberg, and Wiley Rutlege, all men of considerable intellectual capacity whose careers on the bench were cut short for one reason or another. The Justice who was probably least hurt by lack of longevity is Benjamin Cardozo, but that is largely because Cardozo's reputation as a common law jurist was secured before he was appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States. (12)

BEING ON THE "RIGHT SIDE"

This brings me to a third feature of Marshall's opinions: Marshall had the great fortune to be on the "right" side of most of the national disputes that he wrote about, judged from the standpoint of later generations. Put more bluntly, Marshall was the beneficiary of an American politics that, especially in the twentieth century, accepted the centrality of judicial review, sought an expanded role for the national government, and established the importance of national regulatory decision making over local state control. The Civil War and the New Deal both promoted federal supremacy over the states, and the New Deal promoted federal regulatory supremacy. Although judicial review was attacked during the New Deal, Marshall's decisions in McCulloch and Gibbons could...