Rachel Sheldon

The Supreme Court is going to be situated in the basement of the Capitol.

And that gives you a sense, actually, of the hierarchy of what people at the time thought about the Supreme Court.

Always confusing because it has both Democrat and Republican in it.

This is our law.

Allow more power to grow up from the people themselves.

So Congress becomes a Democratic-Republican and you have Jefferson in the White House.

He becomes sort of the foundational chief justice in terms of thinking about development of the court as an institution.

He's now in control of only one branch with the Federalists in charge.

So the story goes that Marshall wore a black robe at his swearing-in and that after that, this became common practice.

There was a degree to which some people did not like to see Supreme Court justices in robes at all, thinking of it as a royal court as opposed to sort of a democratic body.

He wants all the justices to board together and to work together.

He is a big proponent of having unanimous opinions.

He thought that that had the tendency to make the court seem more important.

which is much more what we accept today.

The idea that the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of constitutionality.

Marshall himself was interested in having more of that supreme power for the court, but he also understood it was not possible.

He operates in this world in which he knows he's a minority, especially when the Democratic Republicans led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison are in power.

Marshall and Jefferson were cousins.

They famously did not like each other.

Probably the most famous decision and sort of the beginning of most constitutional law experiences is Marbury v. Madison.