New in paperback
The Supreme Court in the Early Republic
The Chief Justiceships of John Jay
and Oliver Ellsworth
William R. Casto
William R. Casto sheds a new light on America’s federal judiciary and the changing
legal landscape with his detailed examination of the Supreme Court’s formative years.
In a study that spans the period from the Court’s tentative beginnings through the
appointment of its third chief justice, Casto reveals a judicial body quite different in
orientation and philosophy from the current Supreme Court and one with a legacy of
enduring significance for the U.S. legal system.
Casto portrays the founding of the Supreme Court as a conscious effort to help the
newly established government deal more effectively with national security and foreign
policy concerns, and he credits the Court with assisting the Washington and Adams
administrations establish stable relationships with Great Britain and France. The initial
debate over the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction as well as over the method of selecting its
justices is recalled here.
Casto also reveals the philosophical mindset of the first Supreme Court, contrasting the eighteenth-century concept of natural law with the legal positivism on which
the Supreme Court now relies. Using this historical context, he addresses the political
controversy over federal common-law crimes, the drafting of the Judiciary Act of 1789,
and the adoption of judicial review.
William R. Casto is the Paul Whitfield
Horn Professor of Law at Texas Tech
University. He is the author of Oliver
Ellsworth and the Creation of the Federal
Republic and Foreign Affairs and the
Constitution in the Age of Fighting Sail.
Chief Justices of the United States Supreme Court • Herbert A. Johnson, series editor
Available 2012, 296 pages
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