📙 John Marshall (1755-1835) was an American politician and the fourth Chief Justice of the United States from 1801-35 whose court opinions helped lay the basis for US constitutional law. Thayer (1831-1902), the author of this short life of Marshall, was an American legal writer and educationalist. The book draws from an address given by Thayer on February 4 1901 to Harvard Law School and the Bar Association of the City of Boston, and from an article he wrote for the Atlantic Monthly published in March 1901.