The Constitution in the Supreme Court: State and Congressional Powers, 1801-1835 David P
The University of Chicago Law Review Law__Review _VOLUME 49 NUMBER 4 FALL 1982 1982 by The University of Chicago The Constitution in the Supreme Court: State and Congressional Powers, 1801-1835 David P. Curriet This article is the third installment of an attempt to analyze and criticize the constitutional work of the Supreme Court in his- torical sequence, from the lawyer's point of view.' In the twelve years of its existence before the appointment of John Marshall as Chief Justice, the Supreme Court began to de- velop lasting principles of constitutional adjudication, but it de- cided few significant constitutional questions. In the first decade of Marshall's tenure, apart from Marbury v. Madison,2 the Court's constitutional docket consisted almost entirely of relatively minor matters respecting the powers of the federal courts. Although im- t Harry N. Wyatt Professor of Law, University of Chicago. I should like to thank my colleagues Frank Easterbrook, Richard Epstein, Richard Helmholz, Dennis Hutchinson, Stanton Krauss, Philip B. Kurland, Phil C. Neal, Rayman Solomon, and James B. White for their helpful comments and encouragement, and Locke Bowman and Paul Strella, Chicago class of 1982, for their valuable research assistance. I See Currie, The Constitution in the Supreme Court: 1789-1801, 48 U. CHI. L. REv. 819 (1981) [hereinafter cited as Currie, Supreme Court, 1789-1801]; Currie, The Constitu- tion in the Supreme Court: The Powers of the Federal Courts, 1801-1835, 49 U. CH. L. REv. 646 (1982) [hereinafter cited as Currie, FederalCourts, 1801-1835]. These articles form the beginning of a study to be published in book form by The University of Chicago Press.
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