United States History - 19th Century - General & Miscellaneous, Democracy & Republicanism, Executive Branch, United States History - General & Miscellaneous, U.S. - Political Biography, Supreme Court, U.S. Politics - History, U.S. Politics - General & Mis

What Kind of Nation

Name: What Kind of Nation
Author: Simon
ISBN: 9780684848709

by Simon

Write a review

Overview

What Kind of Nation is a riveting account of the bitter and protracted struggle between two titans of the early republic over the power of the presidency and the independence of the judiciary. The clash between fellow Virginians (and second cousins) Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall remains the most decisive confrontation between a president and a chief justice in American history. Fought in private as well as in full public view, their struggle defined basic constitutional relationships in the early days of the republic and resonates still in debates over the role of the federal government vis-a-vis the states and the authority of the Supreme Court to interpret laws.

Jefferson was a strong advocate of states' rights who distrusted the power of the federal government. He believed that the Constitution defined federal authority narrowly and left most governmental powers to the states. He was suspicious of the Federalist-dominated Supreme Court, whose members he viewed as partisan promoters of their political views at the expense of Jefferson's Republicans. When he became president, Jefferson attempted to correct the Court's bias by appointing Republicans to the Court. He also supported an unsuccessful impeachment of Federalist Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase.

Marshall believed in a strong federal government and was convinced that an independent judiciary offered the best protection for the Constitution and the nation. After he was appointed by Federalist President John Adams to be chief justice in 1801 (only a few weeks before Jefferson succeeded Adams), he issued one far-reaching opinion after another. Beginning with the landmark decision Marbury v. Madison in 1803, and through many cases involving states' rights, impeachment, treason, and executive privilege, Marshall established the Court as the final arbiter of the Constitution and the authoritative voice for the constitutional supremacy of the federal government over the states.

As Marshall's views prevailed, Jefferson became increasingly bitter, certain that the Court was suffocating the popular will. But Marshall's carefully reasoned rulings endowed the Court with constitutional authority even as they expanded the power of the federal government, paving the way for later Court decisions sanctioning many pivotal laws of the modern era, such as those of the New Deal, the Great Society, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In a fascinating description of the treason trial of Jefferson's former vice president, Aaron Burr, James F. Simon shows how Marshall rebuffed President Jefferson's claim of executive privilege. That decision served as precedent for a modern Supreme Court ruling rejecting President Nixon's claim that he did not have to hand over the Watergate tapes.

More than 150 years after Jefferson's and Marshall's deaths, their words and achievements still reverberate in constitutional debate and political battle. What Kind of Nation is a dramatic rendering of a bitter struggle between two shrewd politicians and powerful statesmen that helped create a United States.

About the Author, Simon

James F. Simon is the Martin Professor of Law and Dean Emeritus at New York Law School. He is the author of seven previous books on American history, law, and politics. His books have won the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award and twice been named New York Times Notable Books. He lives with his wife in West Nyack, New York.

Reviews

There are no reviews yet. Log in to write one.

Editorials

From Barnes & Noble

Founding fathers Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall seemingly had much in common. First cousins, they both hailed from Virginia and both cared passionately about the infant nation called America. But one was a president, the other a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. That meant an ongoing battle over which branch of the government would dominate, a battle well-documented in author James Simon's exciting history.

Publishers Weekly

Simon (a former Time editor, now a law professor at NYU) examines the decades of conflict between the states' rights views of Thomas Jefferson and the federalist beliefs of John Marshall. In 1801, at the end of Adams's presidency, Marshall accepted the Supreme Court chief justice's position and Jefferson became the nation's third president. That set the stage for years of competition between the two philosophies of government, especially the two visions of the judiciary, represented by the principal antagonists of Simon's history. Simon deftly explains how Jefferson and Marshall maintained a faeade of civility in their public pronouncements while unleashing blistering mutual vituperation privately. Ultimately, as Simon demonstrates, Marshall prevailed. His technique was subtlety itself. In his opinion in Marbury v. Madison, Marshall gave an ostensible victory to Madison (Jefferson's vice president) but reached that result by asserting the authority of the Supreme Court to declare acts of Congress unconstitutional. That assertion had far-reaching implications for consolidating the federal government's power. Once the Supreme Court became the ultimate interpreter of the Constitution, the court repeatedly exercised its authority to invalidate state laws and court decisions inconsistent with the federal Constitution. Simon usefully narrows his focus to a handful of key decisions by the Marshall court, showing how the justice's concept of what kind of nation the U.S. should be progressively swept aside Jefferson's belief that state and federal governments were equal sovereigns. Simon's book illuminates the origins of a national political debate that continues today. (Mar.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Kirkus Reviews

From NYU law professor Simon: a lucid account of the clash between two strong-willed men and two sharply divergent political tendencies. Jefferson, writes Simon (The Center Holds: The Power Struggle Inside the Rehnquist Court, 1995; Law/NYU), had a profound distrust for centralized authority, be it king or Congress, and a nagging suspicion that "the Constitution was an invitation to monarchy." To counter the growing power of the Federalists, he organized the Democratic-Republican Party and set about vigorously protesting such legislation as the Jay Treaty of 1794 and the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. (Though he believed the second law gave too much power to the federal government, Simon notes, Jefferson "did not object to selective prosecutions of his political critics under state seditious libel laws.") Jefferson reserved special contempt for his chief Federalist bugaboo, fellow Virginian John Marshall, whom he derided for "acting under the mask of Republicanism" and exhibiting "lax lounging manners." As legislator and later as Supreme Court justice, Marshall would repay the compliment by contesting Jefferson at every turn, suspecting that he sought to weaken the power of the federal government and especially the executive in order to increase his personal power. Marshall's opposition came perhaps nowhere more forcibly than in his formulation of the federal judiciary's decision in the 1803 case of Marbury v. Madison, which ruled that the court alone was responsible for determining what was or was not constitutional and could strike down congressional legislation and executive orders on constitutional grounds. Simon notes that the debate between the two political philosophies, arrayingstates' rights on one hand and federal power on the other, has been a constant in American political history, though, as he writes, the uses to which Jefferson's states'-rights arguments have been put "would probably have appalled the nation's third president." Simon's excellent venture in legal and political history illuminates both the roots of an ongoing controversy and the characters of two great historic figures.