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During his thirty-five years as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Marshall wrote the opinions in 80 cases involving international law issues. But unlike other scholars who have claimed that Marshall's education in international law came from these cases, Frances Howell Rudko argues that Marshall was intensively schooled in international law issues in the period between 1793 and 1801. In this work, she explores these crucial years in Marshall's life, and demonstrates that most of the key principles he applied in his international law cases were learned during his pre-Court days.

Rudko focuses her study on Marshall's experiences in the eight years prior to his appointment to the Supreme Court, when the events following the Proclamation of Neutrality ushered him into the national political arena. Four episodes from this period are carefully examined and are shown to have provided the foundation for his understanding of international law. They are his appearance before the Supreme Court as debtors' counsel in the case against pre-Revolutionary British creditors; his role in representing the United States in a critical diplomatic mission to France; his time spent in the House of Representatives; and his direction of U.S. foreign policy during his tenure as Secretary of State. These experiences presented Marshall with a daily look at both the realities of international relations and the specifics of international law, and introduced him to many of the issues he would later face as Chief Justice. Students and scholars of American history, the Supreme Court, and political science will find this to be an indispensable work, as will most public, college, and university libraries.