Book Description

Excerpt from Sketches of the Lives and Judicial Services of the Chief-Justices: Of the Supreme Court of the United States Without further remark I might here submit this volume to the judgment of the reader, and leave it to speak for itself. But a single additional Obser vation seems proper and necessary. I am aware that the review of judicial decisions, which I have given somewhat at length, is a wide departure from the ordinary course of biographical writing. 1 have not entered upon it, however, without due reflection and design. A main object in undertaking this work has been to trace something like a history of the United States Supreme Court, and to present a brief and succinct, but connected, view Of the Con stitutional jurisprudence of the United States; and I knew of no more agreeable and interesting mode of doing this than by combining it with sketches of the public and professional lives of those eminent men who have from time to time presided in the Supreme Federal tribunal. I have attempted thus to unite judicial and constitutional history with biography. This has enabled me to take a wider and more general view of the entire subject to embrace within these sketches not only those matters which are properly the subject of the memoirs of a life, but also to trace the history of the Federal judiciary from its earliest beginnings; to consider the facts and results con nected with the adoption of the Federal Constitution, and to review, or notice, more or less fully, most of the important Constitutional questions which have been discussed in the Supreme Court from the foundation of the government to the present time. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.