Tucker, John Randolph (1823–1897)

• Author: Dennis J. Mahoney
• Pages: 2737

Page 2737

A political leader, scholar, and attorney, John Randolph Tucker was the son of HENRY ST. GEORGE TUCKER and the grandson of ST. GEORGE TUCKER. He was attorney general of Virginia (1857?1865), congressman (1875?1887), professor of law at Washington and Lee University (1870?1875, 1888?1897), and president of the American Bar Association (1894). From his retirement from Congress until his death he worked on his two-volume commentary, The Constitution of the United States, which was published posthumously in 1899. Tucker continued the family's tradition of STATES ' RIGHTS constitutionalism, proposing that the TENTH AMENDMENT was the key to understanding the Constitution. He was strikingly influenced by European political theorists, including J. K. Bluntschli, and rejected the ideas of NATURAL...