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.

A concise, well-written examination by a lawyer-historian of the judicial restraint philosophies of President Truman's four appointees to the Supreme Court: Harold Burton, Fred Vinson, Tom Clark, and Sherman Minton. Rudko's analysis of the four men's opinions in criminal procedure, loyalty-security, racial discrimination, and alien rights cases show that Truman was far more successful than most presidents in choosing justices whose view of the judicial role matched his own. Choice Much of the debate surrounding the Supreme Court can be traced to the notion that the Court is primarily a political rather than a judicial institution. When the Court is viewed from an ideological standpoint, it becomes tempting, for example, to equate judicial restraint with conservatism, and activism with a liberal political perspective. In her study of the Truman Court, Rudko demonstrates the fallacy of the political approach. Focusing of the record of President Truman's four liberal appointees, she looks at the judicial philosophy underlying important decisions involving the rights of individuals and shows how judicial issues--especially the balance between restraint and activism--have determined the decision-making process.