![]() ![]() Second, Brookhiser is not a lawyer, and his political journalism skills empower him to tell the story of his subject’s landmark career on the Supreme Court absent legalese, writing up the facts and holdings in Marshall’s most important cases as if they were short stories - which makes for an easy read out of what could have been technical tedium. The author has previously written acclaimed biographies of Washington, Hamilton, the Adamses, Morris (the Constitution’s principal draftsman), and Madison. First, he takes on the task with a sizable head start over other historians because of his thorough understanding of Marshall’s peers. Two reasons explain Brookhiser’s being the right person to raise Chief Justice Marshall’s profile on history’s radar screen. In his new book, John Marshall: The Man Who Made the Supreme Court, Richard Brookhiser attributes the shortage of attention to his subject’s meager lifetime paper trail, and to the public’s common (but erroneous) perception that grasping the particulars of our nation’s most influential chief justice requires a measure of legal education. Always on the short list of our most important Founding Fathers, John Marshall’s place near the top is secure, yet he’s never received as much historical coverage as his peers. ![]()
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