I signed up for a graduate course this spring through BPS/Boston University as part of the district’s current Teaching American History (TAH) grant. With a focus on the Supreme Court and American civic history, I’m looking forward to seeing how the material can help strengthen the 12th grade civics pilot I’ve been working on.
The focus for the assigned reading and class this late afternoon? John Marshall, fourth Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and as Jean Edward Smith titles her biographical tome, the ‘Definer of a Nation.’ Reading over and discussing some of his core early decisions, and reviewing the
John Marshall
historical context of them, reminds you of how much breathing space (as Kirk Varnedoe might describe Frank Stella’s modern art) and delicacy there is in the lives and decisions of those who are often ‘flattened’ by historical memory. Sure, you think of John Marshall as the Supreme Court judge who established the core principle of judicial review and established the Supreme Court as the body to ‘expound the Constitution.’ But to read the details and background of some of his seminal decisions, such as those in Marbury v. Madison or McCulloch v. Maryland, and to see the skilled argumentation and rhetoric behind complex decisions? And to see how nuanced positions often lead to the formation and elucidation of what are now bedrock principles of our federal government? Pretty impressive…
And a favorite? How good the insults were, as your students might say, ‘back in the day.’ In response to editorial detractors regarding one of his decisions, he lets a good one rip, writing that those who had been particularly vocal against one of the Court’s recent rulings were individuals who represented ‘an obsequious, silent opinion.’ Not a bad one to put in the insult bank, huh?
Focusing on John Marshall
I signed up for a graduate course this spring through BPS/Boston University as part of the district’s current Teaching American History (TAH) grant. With a focus on the Supreme Court and American civic history, I’m looking forward to seeing how the material can help strengthen the 12th grade civics pilot I’ve been working on.
The focus for the assigned reading and class this late afternoon? John Marshall, fourth Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and as Jean Edward Smith titles her biographical tome, the ‘Definer of a Nation.’ Reading over and discussing some of his core early decisions, and reviewing the
John Marshall
historical context of them, reminds you of how much breathing space (as Kirk Varnedoe might describe Frank Stella’s modern art) and delicacy there is in the lives and decisions of those who are often ‘flattened’ by historical memory. Sure, you think of John Marshall as the Supreme Court judge who established the core principle of judicial review and established the Supreme Court as the body to ‘expound the Constitution.’ But to read the details and background of some of his seminal decisions, such as those in Marbury v. Madison or McCulloch v. Maryland, and to see the skilled argumentation and rhetoric behind complex decisions? And to see how nuanced positions often lead to the formation and elucidation of what are now bedrock principles of our federal government? Pretty impressive…
And a favorite? How good the insults were, as your students might say, ‘back in the day.’ In response to editorial detractors regarding one of his decisions, he lets a good one rip, writing that those who had been particularly vocal against one of the Court’s recent rulings were individuals who represented ‘an obsequious, silent opinion.’ Not a bad one to put in the insult bank, huh?