Without Precedent

by Joel Richard Paul

  11Daily National Intelligencer, Jun. 7, 1813, vol. I, No. 135, p. 1.

  12Wood, Empire, 693.

  13Brown v. U.S., 12 U.S. 110, 110–111 (1814).

  14Brown v. U.S., 12 U.S. 110, 111–112.

  15Brown v. U.S., 12 U.S. 110, 112.

  16Brown v. U.S., 12 U.S. 110, 114.

  17Brown v. U.S., 12 U.S. 110, 134–135, 151.

  18Brown v. U.S., 12 U.S. 110, 153–154.

  19Brown v. U.S., 12 U.S. 110, 125.

  20Brown v. U.S., 12 U.S. 110, 125.

  21Marshall’s decision in Brown limited the power of the commander in chief. During the Cold War, Story’s dissenting view that the president possesses broad plenary authority to act as commander in chief without congressional authorization eclipsed Marshall’s more limited view of executive power. More than a quarter of a century after the collapse of the Soviet Union, perhaps it is time to return to Marshall’s formulation of a president subject to the will of Congress. See, generally, Paul, “The Geopolitical Constitution,” 671.

  22C.M.S., “Home Life of Chief Justice Marshall,” William & Mary Quarterly 12, no. 1 (Jan. 1932), 68.

  23Beveridge, Marshall, 4:80–81.

  24Borneman, 1812, 222–223.

  25Borneman, 1812, 223–229.

  26Anthony S. Pitch, The Burning of Washington: The British Invasion of 1814 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1998), 110.

  27Adams, History, 1013–1014.

  28Pitch, Burning Washington, 120–121.

  29Pitch, Burning Washington, 81.

  30Adams, History, 1015.

  31Pitch, Burning Washington, 139–140.

  32Kevin Ambrose, Dan Henry, and Andy Weiss, Washington Weather: The Weather Sourcebook for the D.C. Area (Washington, D.C.: Historical Enterprises, 2002), 31–32.

  33Adams, History, 1015.

  34“Latest from Camp,” Richmond Enquirer, Aug. 31, 1814, p. 3.

  CHAPTER 25. FRIENDS AND ENEMIES

  1Smith, Marshall, 420–421.

  2Robert Pohl, “Lost Capitol Hill: The Caldwell House,” The Hill, November 15, 2010. Found at www.thehillishome/2010/h/lost–capitol–hill–the–caldwell–house.

  3Beveridge, Marshall, 4:130–131.

  4Thirty Hogsheads of Sugar v. Boyle, 13 U.S. 191 (1815).

  5Thirty Hogsheads of Sugar v. Boyle, 13 U.S. 191, 198 (1815).

  6The “Phoenix,” 5 C. Rob. 21 (1803); The “Vrow Anna Catharina,” 5 C. Rob. 167 (1783).

  7Thirty Hogsheads of Sugar v. Boyle, 13 U.S. 191, 199.

  8The Nereide, 13 U.S. 388 (1815). This was one of the rare occasions in which both Justices Johnson and Story dissented.

  9The Nereide, 13 U.S. 388, 418.

  10The Nereide, 13 U.S. 388, 423–429.

  11The Nereide, 13 U.S. 388, 422–423.

  12E.g., Norman Dorsen, “The Relevance of Foreign Legal Materials in U.S. Constitutional Cases: A Conversation Between Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Stephen Breyer,” International Journal of Constitutional Law 3, no. 4 (October 2005): 519–541.

  13To Mary Marshall, Feb. 14, 1817, MP, 8:149.

  14As quoted, Beveridge, Marshall, 4:82–83.

  15As quoted, Beveridge, Marshall, 4:89.

  16Ammon, James Monroe, xvi–xix, 12–13.

  17Merrill D. Peterson, The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 50.

  18Ammon, James Monroe, 367–368.

  19Smith, Marshall, 493–494.

  20Mason, My Dearest Polly, 286.

  21N. S. Davis, History of the American Medical Association (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co., 1855), 101.

  22Beveridge, Marshall, 4:76–78.

  23Mason, My Dearest Polly, 233–234, 273; Beveridge, Marshall, 4:69.

  24Marshall to Story, Nov. 26, 1826, MP, 10:315.

  25Citing North American Review, xx:444–445, Beveridge, Marshall, 4:72.

  26Mason, My Dearest Polly, 276–277.

  27Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee, 14 U.S. 304 (1816).

  28As quoted in Beveridge, Marshall 4:81.

  29As quoted in Beveridge, Marshall, 4:145.

  30Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee, 14 U.S. 304, 312–313.

  31Editorial note, MP, 8:117–118.

  32Newmyer, Marshall, 360–362.

  33Beveridge, Marshall, 4:145–146.

  34Federalist Papers Number 80, as quoted in Newmyer, Marshall, 360.

  35Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee, 14 U.S. 304, 325.

  36Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee, 14 U.S. 304, 326–337.

  37Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee, 14 U.S. 304, 340–341.

  38Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee, 14 U.S. 304, 343.

  39Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee, 14 U.S. 304, 373–374.

  40Oliver Wendell Holmes, Collected Legal Papers (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1921), 295–296.

  CHAPTER 26. THE SUPREME LAW

  1Myers, Financial History, 80–82.

  2Myers, Financial History, 83.

  3Warren, Supreme Court, 1:504–506.

  4Story to Stephen White, Mar. 13, 1819, Life and Letters of Story, 1:325, as cited in Smith, Marshall, 442.

  5Opinion on Constitutionality of Bank, Feb. 23, 1791, in Syett, ed., Papers of Alexander Hamilton, 8:113.

  6McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316, 407.

  7U.S. Constitution, Art. I(8)(18).

  8McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316, 421.

  9McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316, 405.

  10McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316, 435–436.

  11This theory of democratic-representation reinforcement is developed by John Hart Ely, Democracy and Distrust (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980).

  12Weekly Register, as quoted in Beveridge, Marshall, 4:310.

  13Beveridge, Marshall, 4:309.

  14Jefferson to Ritchie, Dec. 25, 1820, in Ford, ed., Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 12:177.

  15Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, Dec. 26, 1820, in Ford, ed., Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 12:186–187.

  16Taylor, Internal Enemy, 405.

  17Marshall to Joseph Story, Mar. 24, 1819, MP, 8:280.

  18Marshall to Joseph Story, Jul. 13, 1821, MP, 9:179.

  19Osborn v. Bank of the United States, 22 U.S. 738 (1824). The Eleventh Amendment provided that a state cannot be sued in a federal court by a citizen of another state or a foreign state.

  20Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. 264, 407–412.

  21Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. 264, 414.

  22Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. 264, 389.

  23Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. 264, 416.

  24As quoted in White, Marshall Court, 521; Algernon Sidney, “On the Lottery Decision,” The Enquirer (Richmond), May 25, 1821, p. 80, as cited in Margaret E. Horsnell, Spencer Roane: Judicial Advocate of Jeffersonian Principles (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1986), 158; Hampden, “Cohens v. Virginia,” Washington Gazette, Jul. 25, 1821, p. 2.

  25Hampden, “Cohens v. Virginia,” Washington Gazette, Jun. 21, 1821, p. 2.

  26Marshall to Joseph Story, Sep. 18, 1821, MP, 9:184.

  27Susan Dunn, Dominion of Memories: Jefferson, Madison, and the Decline of Virginia (New York: Basic Books, 2007), 145–148.

  CHAPTER 27. THE PIRATE LOTTERY

  1Haskins and Johnson, History, 2:163.

  2Haskins and Johnson, History, 2:160–161.

  3Warren, Supreme Court, 1:595–596.

  4Ammon, James Monroe, 450–451.

  5Peterson, The Great Triumvirate, 59–62.

  6Jefferson to John Holmes, Apr. 22, 1820, in Ford, ed., Writings of Jefferson, 17:158.

  7U.S. Constitution, Art. I(2).

  8U.S. Constitution, Art. I(9).

  9U.S. Constitution, Art. I(2),(9), and (10).
/>   10U.S. Constitution, Art. V.

  11U.S. Constitution, Art. I(8) and Art. IV(4).

  12U.S. Constitution, Art. IV(2).

  13William Wiecek, The Sources of Antislavery Constitutionalism in America 1760–1848 (1977), 62–63.

  14U.S. Census, 1810; Economic History Association, www.http://eh.net/encyclopedia/slavery-in-the-united-states/.

  15Taylor, Internal Enemy, 20.

  16An Act to Prohibit the Slave Trade of 1794, 1 U.S. Statutes at Large 348.

  17Act to Prohibit Importation of Slaves of 1807, 2 Stat. 426 (1807).

  18The Antelope, 23 U.S. (10 Wheat.) 66 (1824).

  19The Antelope, 23 U.S. (10 Wheat.) 66, 67–68 (1824); The Act in Addition to the Acts Prohibiting the Slave Trade, March 2, 1819, Statutes at Large III, 532.

  20The Antelope, 23 U.S. (10 Wheat.) 66, 76. Portugal had signed a treaty with Britain in 1815 promising to end the slave trade. And at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 Portugal had signed a declaration with the other European powers condemning the slave trade as “repugnant to the principles of humanity and universal morality” and calling on all states to abolish it. David King, Vienna 1814: How the Conquerors of Napoleon Made Love, War, and Peace at the Congress of Vienna (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2008), 217.

  21John T. Noonan Jr., The Antelope: The Ordeal of the Recaptured Africans in the Administrations of James Monroe and John Quincy Adams (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 39.

  22Noonan, The Antelope, 6.

  23Noonan, The Antelope, 31–32, 46–47.

  24Noonan, The Antelope, 46–49.

  25Noonan, The Antelope, 57–61.

  26J. Q. Adams, diary, Mar. 27, 1820, in Charles Francis Adams, Memoir of John Quincy Adams: Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1898. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1875), 3:43.

  27G. Edward White, History of the Supreme Court of the United States: The Marshall Court and Cultural Change, 1815–1835 (New York: Macmillan, 1988), 333–336.

  28Noonan, The Antelope, 62–64. Johnson’s circuit court opinion is reproduced in Carol Necole Brown, “Casting Lots: The Illusion of Justice and Accountability in Property Allocation,” Buffalo Law Review 53, no. 65, (Winter 2005):130–140.

  29Act to Protect the Commerce of the United States and Punish the Crime of Piracy, May 15, 1820, 3 Statutes 600 (1820).

  30Case of the Antelope, Vol. 103, Minute Book 1816–1823, pp. 192–198, Div. Savannah, Georgia, Circuit Courts, Records Group 21, U.S. District Court, National Archives—Southeast Region (Atlanta) as reprinted in, Brown, “Casting Lots,” 143.

  31The Case of the Antelope, Circuit Court of Georgia, May 11, 1821. discussed in Noonan, The Antelope, 64–66.

  32The Antelope, 23 U.S. 66 (1825).

  33The Antelope, 23 U.S. 66, 74–75 (1825).

  34The Antelope, 23 U.S. 66, 76 (1825).

  35King, Vienna 1814, 217.

  36The Antelope, 23 U.S. 66, 80–81 (1825).

  37The Antelope, 23 U.S. 66, 82–83 (1825).

  38The Antelope, 23 U.S. 66, 86 (1825).

  39The Antelope, 23 U.S. 66, 90–91 (1825).

  40The Antelope, 23 U.S. 66, 107–108 (1825).

  41The Antelope, 23 U.S. 66, 111 (1825).

  42Rudko, “Pause at the Rubicon,” 80–88; Smith, Marshall, 489–490; Ward and Greer, Richmond During the Revolution, 124–125.

  43Marshall to Joseph Story, Sep. 26, 1823, MP, 9:338.

  44E.g., The Brig Caroline, 1 Brockenbrough 384 (Virginia Circuit Court, 1819).

  45See, e.g., Mima Queen v. Hepburn, 7 Cranch 290, 298–299 (1813), J. Duvall dissenting; U.S. v. The La Jeune Eugenie, 2 Mason 409, (Mass. Cir. Ct. 1822), 26 Fed. Cas. 832, 847.

  46The Antelope, 23 U.S. 66, 114–116 (1825).

  47Marshall was particularly persuaded by a decision by Sir William Scott, the leading British authority on admiralty law, holding that the slave trade was permitted by international law. The Antelope, 23 U.S. 66, 118–119, citing The Louis, 2 Dodson’s Rep. 210, 238 (1817). Cf., The Amedie, 1 Acton’s Rep. 240 (1810), holding that the American claimant had no rights “upon principles of universal law, to claim restitution in a prize Court of human beings carried as his slaves.”

  48The Antelope, 23 U.S. 66, 120–121 (1825).

  49The Antelope, 23 U.S. 66, 122 (1825).

  50The Antelope, 23 U.S. 66, 123 (1825).

  51The Antelope, 23 U.S. 66, 130 (1825).

  52Noonan, The Antelope, 135–136.

  53Editorial Note, MP, 10:158.

  54Noonan, The Antelope, 142–143.

  55Wilde to Berrien, May 22, 1827, University of North Carolina MS (Berrien Collection), as quoted in Noonan, The Antelope, 145.

  56Marshall to Pickering, Mar. 20, 1826. MP, 10:277.

  57U.S. v. La Jeune Eugenie, 2 Mason 409, 26 F. Cas. 832 (1822).

  58E.g., Newmyer, Marshall, 433–434; Ziegler, International Law of Marshall, 307–310.

  59Newmyer, Marshall, 434; Smith, Marshall, 488.

  60For example, Rutherford recognized that the law of nature was distinguishable from the law of nations, which he said was based on the positive consent of states. However, he asserted that “all nations . . . are obliged to follow the same law of nature.” And he concluded that, “there is no law of nations which is wholly positive.” Rutherford, Institutes of Natural Law, Book II, C.IX: I and IV, pp. 483, 485.

  61The Antelope, 23 U.S. 66, 114 (1825).

  CHAPTER 28. THE GREAT STEAMBOAT CASE

  1Herbert A. Johnson, Gibbons v. Ogden: John Marshall, Steamboats, and the Commerce Clause (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2010), 26–28.

  2Johnson, Gibbons v. Ogden, 26–30; Stites, “A More Perfect Union: The Steamboat Case,” in John W. Johnson, ed., Historic U.S. Court Cases: An Encyclopedia (New York: Routledge, 2001), 357–358.

  3Livingston v. Van Ingen, 9 Johns. 507 (1811).

  4Thomas H. Cox, Gibbons v. Ogden: Law and Society in the Early Republic (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2009), 70–73.

  5Michael Birkner, Samuel L. Southard: Jeffersonian Whig (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1984), 36–37.

  6Cox, Gibbons v. Ogden, 70–74, 93–100.

  7As quoted in Henry Adams, John Randolph (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1882), 276.

  8Cox, Gibbons v. Ogden, 143.

  9Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824), 13.

  10Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824), 18–20.

  11Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824), 27–29.

  12“Steam Boat Cause,” Middlesex (Connecticut) Gazette, Feb. 11, 1824, p. 3.

  13Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824), 37–41, 45.

  14Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824), 60.

  15Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824), 71–74.

  16Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824), 184–185; “Steam Boat Case,” Hartford Advertiser, Feb. 17, 1824, p. 3.

  17Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824), 187–188.

  18Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824), 189–190.

  19Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824), 191.

  20Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824), 194.

  21Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824), 195.

  22Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824), 196.

  23Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824), 197.

  24Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824), 222.

  25Beveridge, Marshall, 3:443. Beveridge concluded that Marshall used Justice Johnson, as a Republican from South Carolina, to express Marshall’s true opinion that the federal power was exclusive.

  26Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824), 227.

  27Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824), 231.

  28Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824), 226.

  29Warren, Supreme Court, 615.

  30New-York Evening Post, Mar. 5, 1824, p. 2
, cols. 2–3, as cited in Warren, Supreme Court, 613.

  31As quoted in Warren, Supreme Court, 614.

  32Warren, Supreme Court, 613–615.

  33Richmond Enquirer, Mar. 16, 1824, as cited in Warren, Supreme Court, 618.

  34Warren, Supreme Court, 615.

  CHAPTER 29. PUBLIC AND PRIVATE

  1Morton J. Horwitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 112.

  2Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 17 U.S. (1819), 518, 524–525.

  3Francis N. Stites, Private Interest & Public Gain: The Dartmouth College Case, 1819 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1972), 7–11.

  4Federal Constitution, Art. I (10)(1).

  51820 Federal Census, Occupation and Economic Data, https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1790.

  6Robert V. Remini, Daniel Webster: The Man and His Time (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 154.

  7Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 17 U.S. 518, 583–584.

  8Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 17 U.S. 518, 592.

  9Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 17 U.S. 518, 597.

  10Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 17 U.S. 518, 598–599.

  11As quoted in Remini, Daniel Webster, 156. This quotation does not appear in the official court report but was reconstructed based on eyewitness accounts. The reaction in the courtroom was later reported by Justice Story. White, Marshall Court, 615–617; Stites, Private Interest & Public Gain, 64.

  12Stites, Private Interest & Public Gain, 69.

  13Stites, Private Interest & Public Gain, 87.

  14Warren, The Supreme Court, 1:460–461.

  15Remini, Daniel Webster, 117, 161; White, The Marshall Court, 3:178.

  16Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 17 U.S. 518, 634–636.

  17Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 17 U.S. 518, 644.

  18Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 17 U.S. 518, 645.

  19Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 17 U.S. 518, 650.

  20“From the Palladium: The Dartmouth College Case,” Vermont Intelligencer, May 10, 1819, p. 2.

  21“Our Country,” (republished from New-Hampshire Patriot), Vermont Republican & American Yeoman, Apr. 5, 1819, p. 2.

  22Ironically, the university president, William Allen, became president of Bowdoin College, where he later invoked the precedent of the Dartmouth College case to defend Bowdoin from similar interference by the State of Maine. Stites, Private Interest & Public Gain, 101–103.