Marshall, John (1755–1835)

US politician and jurist. He held office in the US House of Representatives 1799–1800 and was secretary of state 1800–01. As chief justice of the US Supreme Court 1801–35, he established the independence of the court and the supremacy of federal over state law, and his opinions became universally accepted interpretations of the US Constitution.

Marshall established the doctrine of judicial review, which affirmed the Supreme Court's authority to declare acts of Congress unconstitutional, in the case Marbury v. Madison (1803). He defined the role of the federal government in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), when Marshall ruled that when federal and state laws conflict, federal law supersedes that of the states; and in Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), when he ruled that a state could not enact laws that give exclusive rights to its waters. Marshall participated in more than 1,000 Supreme Court decisions during his career.

Born in Prince William (now Faquier) County, Virginia, Marshall served intermittently in the Continental Army until 1780 and then studied law. As a Federalist, he served in the Virginia state legislature and in 1797 became a minister to France, where he became an important diplomatic figure in the XYZ Affair.