Our age of civic iconoclasm continues apace. In obedience to our misguided, new pieties, Cleveland’s Marshall School of Law will now consider stripping its namesake: Chief Justice John Marshall. This comes after the UIC John Marshall Law School decided to change its name to the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law last year. This indiscriminate purge makes no distinction between America’s great, even if flawed, Founders and those who were true purveyors of evil and oppression.
Marshall stands among the great forgers of America in general and of the U.S. Supreme Court in particular. He voted to support the Constitution at the crucial Virginia ratifying convention. He served important duties overseas in France. Above all, he served as the most consequential chief justice of the United States Supreme Court in American history. His opinions in cases such as Marbury v. Madison, McCulloch v. Maryland, and Gibbons v. Ogden established baselines for judicial power and federalism that redound to this day.
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