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John Marshall
Essay  &  Liberty Law Talk
November 15, 2018
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The John Marshall Legacy: A Conversation with Richard Brookhiser

with Richard Brookhiser

Richard Brookhiser joins this edition of LibertyLawTalk to discuss his new biography of John Marshall.

Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a senior fellow of the National Review Institute. His many books include Founders' Son: A Life of Abraham Lincoln; Alexander Hamilton, American; and Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington.
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Law & Liberty welcomes civil and lively discussion of its articles. Abusive comments will not be tolerated. We reserve the right to delete comments - or ban users - without notification or explanation.

on November 15, 2018 at 13:49:27 pm

Gawd, is there anything worse than listening to two Trump hating Federalist hagiographers mooning over wonderfulness of Washington and Marshall?

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Image of EK
EK
on November 15, 2018 at 15:20:50 pm

Before July 2016 I admired that version of National Review which was founded and for decades headed by William Buckley and I distrusted the Donald Trump who sought the Republican Party's presidential nomination. I completely reversed my opinions on both matters over the next 2 years, during which National Review has persisted in its misguided disdain for Trump (with the apparent exception of its Editor, Richard Lowry, who seems to have seen the light) and its false assertion that Trump (contrary to Brookhiser's Marshall but very much like Marshall's Jefferson) is both a political demagogue abusive of the rule of law and untethered from moral and constitutional restraint.

Yet, I appreciate L&L's providing a platform for National Review's intellectually-admirable (and great teller of American history's vital stories) Richard Brookhiser to discuss his new, concise but highly readable (and therefore publicly-useful) biography of the salient political aspects and the complicated public law issues of Marshall's career. The reason for my appreciation is simple: While Marshall was the third essential Founder (after Washington and Hamilton,) public ignorance is ubiquitous about why the man was fundamentally important to the American Founding and the rule of law in the United States; even constitutional lawyers suffer from this deficiency. This severe defect in America's historical self-awareness can be remedied only by more historians of the Founding (like Brookhiser) and more constitutional scholars (like Charles Hobson, "The Great Chief Justice; John Marshall and the Rule of Law.") writing and speaking knowledgeably (as through L&L's podcast) about Marshall.

BTW: Brookhiser touts as fact the recent assertion that Marshall was a major slaveholder. That assertion by legal historian Paul Finkleman has been challenged by another recent Marshall biographer, University of California, Hastings College of the Law Professor Joel Richard Paul in his " Without Precedent: Chief Justice John Marshall and His Times." See this CSPAN Book TV "Q and A" with Paul at 43 minutes and 50 seconds:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?452890-1/qa-joel-richard-paul

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Image of Pukka Luftmensch
Pukka Luftmensch
on July 17, 2019 at 05:58:55 am

[…] John Marshall Legacy: A Conversation with Richard Brookhiser” [Law and Liberty audio on new biography; Federalist Society panel with Brookhiser, Hon. Kyle Duncan, Hon. Kevin […]

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Supreme Court roundup | Overlawyered
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Law & Liberty welcomes civil and lively discussion of its articles. Abusive comments will not be tolerated. We reserve the right to delete comments - or ban users - without notification or explanation.

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