John Marshall

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Upon joining the House of Delegates, Marshall aligned himself with members of the conservative Tidewater establishment such as James Monroe and Richard Henry Lee. With the backing of his influential father-in-law, Marshall was elected to the Council of State, becoming the youngest individual up to that point to serve on the council. In 1785, Marshall took up the additional office of Recorder of the Richmond City Hustings Court. Meanwhile, Marshall sought to build up his own legal practice, a difficult proposition during a time of economic recession. In 1786, he purchased the law practice of his cousin, Edmund Randolph, after the latter was elected Governor of Virginia. Marshall gained a reputation as a talented attorney practicing in the state capital of Richmond, and he took on a wide array of cases. He represented the heirs of Lord Fairfax in Hite v. Fairfax (1786), an important case involving a large tract of land in the Northern Neck of Virginia.

Under the Articles of Confederation, the United States during the 1780s was a confederation of sovereign states with a weak national government that had little or no effective power to impose tariffs, regulate interstate commerce, or enforce laws. Influenced by Shays' Rebellion and the powerlessness of the Congress of the Confederation, Marshall came to believe in the necessity of a new governing structure that would replace the powerless national government established by the Articles of Confederation. He strongly favored ratification of the new constitution proposed by the Philadelphia Convention, as it provided for a much stronger federal government. Marshall was elected to the 1788 Virginia Ratifying Convention, where he worked with James Madison to convince other delegates to ratify the new constitution. After a long debate, proponents of ratification emerged victorious, as the convention voted 89 to 79 to ratify the constitution.

After the United States ratified the Constitution, newly elected President George Washington nominated Marshall as the United States Attorney for Virginia. Though the nomination was confirmed by the Senate, Marshall declined the position, instead choosing to focus on his own law practice. In the early 1790s, the Federalist Party and the Democratic-Republican Party emerged as the country was polarized by issues such as the French Revolutionary Wars and the power of the presidency and the federal government. Marshall aligned with the Federalists, and at Alexander Hamilton's request, he organized a Federalist movement in Virginia to counter the influence of Thomas Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans. Like most other Federalists, Marshall favored neutrality in foreign affairs, high tariffs, a strong executive, and a standing military. In 1795, Washington asked Marshall to accept appointment as the United States Attorney General, but Marshall again declined the offer. He did, however, serve in a variety of roles for the state of Virginia during the 1790s, at one point acting as the state's interim Attorney General.

In 1796, Marshall appeared before the Supreme Court of the United States in Ware v. Hylton, a case involving the validity of a Virginia law that provided for the confiscation of debts owed to British subjects. Marshall argued that the law was a legitimate exercise of the state's power, but the Supreme Court ruled against him, holding that the Treaty of Paris in combination with the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution required the collection, rather than confiscation, of such debts. According to biographer Henry Flanders, Marshall's argument in Ware v. Hylton "elicited great admiration at the time of its delivery, and enlarged the circle of his reputation" despite his defeat in the case.

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