Father of the Supreme Court | The Life & Times of John Marshall (ft. Mr. Beat!)

We return once more to the USA! Chief Justice John Marshall, after turning down jobs as state attorney and attorney general, turned out to be one of the most influential justices the Supreme Court has ever had, and is more or less the reason why it continues to be so important today, much to the ire of Jefferson and Jackson.

Footnotes:

1:42 Marshall had actually worked with Adams before as a diplomat to France during the XYZ Affair (which is a whole story unto itself), and then as secretary of state.

3:40 After killing Hamilton, Burr ran off to South Carolina for a little while then came right back to working as Vice President like nothing ever happened. What he was accused of in this instance was that he owned a bunch of land in the Louisiana purchase, which he had leased from Spain, before the French had taken it back, at which point one of two things happened: Either he realized that conflict with Spain was likely to happen and wanted to have a private militia, or he was planning to help Mexico overthrow Spain and establish a new country in former Spanish lands. Jefferson found out about Burr’s shenanigans and declared him a traitor, so he was arrested and brought to court… at which point he was found to be doing nothing that violated American law, so he was released and then arrested and brought to court… and released again, until he was arrested for a third time, and with evidence of private communications with British and Spanish diplomats he was charged with a misdemeanor. Then he was brought to Marshall (albeit not the Supreme Court) at which point it was discovered that the most damning evidence against him had been forged by his would-be co-conspirator.

4:26 Actually, some of the democratic-republicans had recently turned into democrats, the parties were undergoing a big shift at the time, but there was nary a federalist in sight.