Rehnquist/Marshall

If Supreme Court Justices John Marshall and William Rehnquist were to meet in the Supreme Court in the sky, they would have great debates over the role of the court and the structure of the state/federal system. Both Marshall and Rehnquist were Federalists, but with competing views of Federalist theory which was evident in their most famous decisions. For Marshall, those decisions were McCulloch v. Maryland, Gibbons v. Ogden, and Dartmouth v. Woodward. Rehnquist’s landmark decisions were Wallace v Jaffree, US v. Lopez, and US v. Morrison.

Marshall, a loyal Federalist, saw the Constitution as an instrument of national unity and federal power and the guarantee of the security of private property. He made undeniable, with Marbury v. Madison, the until that time uncertain right of the Supreme Court to review federal and state laws and decide them unconstitutional. He viewed the Constitution on the one hand as a precise document setting forth specific powers and on the other hand as a living instrument that should be broadly interpreted so as to give the federal government the means to act effectively within its limited sphere.

In McCulloch v. Maryland, Marshall posited that the Constitution is “intended to endure for ages to come, and, consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs” and helped establish the doctrine of implied powers, particularly the implied powers of Congress under Article I. This is contradictory to Rehnquist’s opinion of the powers of Congress in relation to the states.

Rehnquist was a staunch supporter of the 10th Amendment and State’s sovereignty. Rehnquist wanted the court to show judicial restraint in the wake of the Warren era. In opposition to Marshall’s belief of the Constitution as a living document, Rehnquist believed that interpretation should be implemented with the framer’s intent in mind as revealed