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Summary: TITLE SHOULD BE "WHAT KIND OF COURT"
Review: This is surely the winter of Thomas Jefferson's discontent. His political credo of limiting the power of the federal government is invoked to restrict the rights of individual citizens against giant commercial entities and his defense of executive privilege is used to limit public and Congressional investigation into administrative wrongdoing. To make matters worse, he is attacked by present-day historians as hypocritical, petty, and perhaps worst of all -- trivial.In James F Simon's What Kind of Nation, Jefferson comes off as all three in his battles over constitutional interpretation with his cousin and nemesis John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. One of the blurbs on the jacket describe Simon as
"eminently fair". That would be accurate if the title of the book were "What Kind of Court". But taken as a study of the two men's contribution to the kind of nation the United States became, it is skewed. What Kind of Nation is the story of Marshall's contribution, but it is far from the full record of Jefferson's. Simon, a law professor, is admirable in his clear, readable exposition of how Marshall expanded the powers of the US Supreme Court during his thirty-year stewardship. Nearly single-handedly Marshall established the court as co-equal with the executive and legislative branches of the federal government and superior to the individual states' courts. Both Marshall and Jefferson were political partisans who bent legal ideology to suit their own pragmatic objectives, but Marshall was unquestionably better at it. For example, Marshall was a loyal if unenthusiastic supporter of the Alien and Sedition Acts which Federalist judges used to make political dissent a crime. Yet thirty years later he stage-managed the acquittal of Aaron Burr on charges of treason brought by Jefferson's administration that were based on very real grounds. There were certainly political differences and personal animosity between the two, but matching them off as the primary antagonists in a struggle to shape the future of the nation is artifical. The court was Marshall's forum and its power and well-being his prime concern. Jefferson's arena was broader. As President, Jefferson more than doubled the size of the United States. Marshall did not join his old Federalist allies in opposing the Louisiana Purchase. Lacking an adversarial confrontation, Simon spends no time reflecting on the importance of Jefferson's acquisition in shaping the economic and physical form of the United States. The Louisiana Purchase has had more to do with this country's place in the sun than the powers of the Supreme Court. I would also argue that Simon's focus upon the judicial undervalues Jefferson's importance to the "kind of nation" we are morally and philosophically. Jefferson's words -- not Marshall's -- still express the ideals to which we aspire as a nation. As Jefferson's actions sometimes fell short of his aspirations, so do ours. What Kind of Nation is a well-written thought-provoking book based on careful historical documentation. I enjoyed it thoroughly even though I do not agree with the dialectic it proposes. Like David McCullough's John Adams, it broadens one's understanding of the foundations of our nationhood.
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Summary: The Good Old Days of the early Republic?
Review: What Kind of Nation: Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall and The Epic Struggle to Create a United States by James F. Simon. Chief Justice John Marshall, and his political adversary, President Thomas Jefferson, struggled to define the path of a nation in its infancy. Two political parties, the Federalists, advocating a strong federal government, and the Republicans, defenders of state's rights, vie for political supremacy. A number of judicial decisions, including Marbury vs. Madison, where the Supreme Court became the final arbiter of the Constitution, are discussed at great length in this book. It is very important to shed light on the political and legislative life of the early days of the United States: What Kind of Nation clearly illustrates that there was no absence of political conflict in those days - reflecting the elements of our modern democratic society which continue to this day. Mr. Simon is a Martin Professor of Law at the New York Law School. He is a former correspondent and contributing editor at Time, and the author of several critically acclaimed books on judicial history- The Antagonists, and The Center Holds...
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