U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall was the most consequential jurist in American history, but his historical importance is no match for the modern impulse to disown our flawed forebears. Last week, University of Illinois trustees voted to remove his name from the University of Illinois at Chicago John Marshall Law School, which will now be called the UI-Chicago School of Law.
In his 2018 book "Supreme Injustice: Slavery in the Nation's Highest Court," historian Paul Finkelman documented that Marshall, who led the Supreme Court from 1801 to 1835, owned hundreds of slaves over his lifetime, held racist views and on the bench "always supported slavery, even when statutes and precedent were on the side of freedom." This record, the trustees decided, "render him a highly inappropriate namesake for the law school."
But Marshall was hardly unique in his racial views or his participation in the system of human bondage. There is no purity test from our era he would survive; nor should we expect him to.
What distinguished Marshall was his critical role in establishing the courts as the protectors of American liberties--including, eventually, the liberties of those who had been cruelly oppressed. Carved in marble at the Supreme Court is what he wrote in an 1803 opinion: "It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is."
As much as anyone in American history, Marshall gave life and meaning to the words of the Constitution at a time when the fledgling republic had no assurance that it would survive, much less endure into the 21st century. He should be measured against that moment in time, not today's.
UIC can stand by its own defensible reasons for declining to be associated with him. But for the more important contributions that define his legacy to this day, every American is in Marshall's debt.