Asa Kowals-Rose | Blog for RFILP

These chapters discussed the evolution of the Supreme Court in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with a focus on John Marshall’s tenure as Chief Justice. What struck me most about this era is not that certain decisions proved incredibly consequential—this would be expected a legal system that relies on early precedents—but that those decisions were often about seemingly inconsequential issues. Marbury v. Madison is the best example of this. Thanks John Marshall’s decision, a dispute over a judicial appointment came to serve as the basis for judiciary preeminence in the United States.

One entirely insignificant excerpt that caught my attention was Irons’ explanation of political parties in the mid-nineteenth century. On page 120 he writes, “The Federalists changed their name to the Whig Party between 1836 and 1856, when they became the second Republican Party.” This severely mischaracterizes the decline of the Whig Party. Although the Whigs fell apart in 1856, this was due to their failure to nominate a presidential candidate, not because it reformed itself as the Republican Party. The Republican Party was established in 1854 by a coalition that included former Whigs, but was not itself a seamless continuation of the Whig Party. Irons only mentioned this to clear up confusion about party identities, but in doing so he misrepresented the information and created further confusion.