gence of a feebler political theory, and show ing itself in all its majesty when war and civil dissention came,—it was largely this that saved the country from succumfoing, in the great struggle of forty years ago, and kept our political fabric from going to pieces." And Mr. Bryce, the most discriminating English student of our institutions, has ex pressed the opinion that "no other man did half so much either to develop the Constitu tion by expounding it, or to secure for the judiciary its rightful place in the Govern ment as the living voice of the Constitution. No one vindicated more strenuously the duty of the court to establish the authority of the fundamental law of the land, no one ab stained more scrupulously from trespassing on the field of executive administration or political controversy. The admiration and respect which he and his colleagues won for the court remain its bulwark; the traditions which were formed under him and them have continued in general to guide the action and elevate the sentiments of their successors." An examination of the reports of the court reveals the extent to which this great achieve ment was due to Marshall personally. For the first ten years or more of his service, he alone delivered all the opinions of the court to which any name was attached, except where a case involved an appeal from his own judgment on his circuit, or for any rea son he did not sit.1 This unity and force of judgment con tinued until 1812, when, in the absence of the chief justice, and upon the accession of Jus1 In the few cases where opinions were given by the other justices, it was the English way, seriatim. This was the method in use before Marshall's time. The first printed opinion in the reports is a dissenting opinion. This is due to the fact that the court at the outset adopted the English practice of calling on the judges, beginning with the youngest in commission, to express their individual views. The practice of delivering written opinions, which in the beginning was excep tional, had become the rule before Marshall's accession to the bench.
tice Story and a majority of Republican judges, the present method was inaugurated. In the thirty volumes of reports, from the first Cranch to the ninth Peters, covering Marshall's thirty-four years' tenure of office, one thousand two hundred and fifteen cases are reported. In ninety-four of these cases no opinions were given; fifteen were per curiam; of the remaining one thousand one hun dred and six cases, Marshall delivered the opinion of the court in five hundred and nine teen. In the domain of constitutional law sixty-two judgments are recorded. The chief justice spoke for the court in thirty-six of these cases, the remainder "being apportioned among seven justices, as follows: Story, eleven; William Johnson, six; Washington, five; Paterson, dishing, Baldwin and Thompson, one each. In twenty-three of the thirty-six opinions by Marshall on constitu tional questions there was no dissent. Maribury v. Madison, Sturges v. Crowninshield, McCulloch v. State of Maryland, Cohens v. State of Virginia and Gibbons v. Ogden were all by a unanimous court. Of the thir teen cases in which there was dissent, eight dissents were .by William Johnson, five by Thompson, two each by Washington, Du! vail and Baldwin, and one by McLean. None of these dissenting opinions is conspicuously ' able. In Dartmouth College v. Woodward, Duvall dissented but wrote no opinion. In Osborn г: Bank of the United States John son dissented upon a narrow point of juris diction. In Brown v. State of Maryland, j Craig v. State of Missouri, Cherokee Nation ¡ v. State of Georgia, and Worcester v. State 1 of -Georgia, the various dissents are but fee1 ble attacks upon Marshall's conclusions. In Ogden v. Saunders the chief justice found himself for the first and only time in the minority on a question of constitutional law, and his opinion in that case is accounted one of his ablest efforts.
