To trash out of the ft. Myers landfill. The house was reconstructed in steel frames within the original wall. There was that much space between them. The walls were not conserved until later, but the house was rebuilt and it looked about what it did. It was more like a public building, maybe. No wooden floors, it did not have that saggy fielding that president roosevelt loved. But truman built it for all time so that the main thing would happen, the president would stay in the president s house. He was very emphatic about that. In fact, as the sub cellars were being dug, he came by and they were about to widen the door with air hammers, and he said stop. So they had to take the bulldozer and a truck all down, take it in, build them back, and that is how they built the basement. There is enough space for a driveway to take them out. He saved these walls. He saved the mystique of the white house, president truman did. Susan you mentioned he did not conserve and thats probably where we will end. When of the properties you write about is that sandstone is very course and also subject to deterioration. So how was the sandstone preserved . Mr. Seale in modern times . Susan theres two good stories. Mr. Seale the scots had a stone outside of edinburgh, the craiggly stone is a little stronger than ours, but you can still shoot ahsoe on it. They always washed it. They had their own recipe with a lot of weird things. They put it on brooms and it went in the crevices and little holes in the stones and stayed, while the rain in scotland would wash off most of it over 10 to 20 years. It would leave the hole filled. So when it froze it would not crack. Here, nobody wants to live in a dirty house. They did the whitewash and it was done several times before the fire in 1814. But after the fire, they reused almost everything. President madison just considered it a repair. And so, there were these big, black things all over the stone. They put leadbased paint. The first time the houses painted in 1817. Before it was whitewashed. There is a doorway on the north side of the house we can see it is a magnificent doorway. And it shows the ornament, its an original door. Its an ornament and the fire, te suit still on it. Susan in modern times they were able to preserve it how . Mr. Seale the chief usher then begin to be concerned because the house was being painted every year and the expense was terrible. So he came up with a project and presented it to president jimmy carter, who enthusiastically supported. And a project of cleaning the stone down to the original stone took place. It took 20 years. It was repaired with plugs, with splices, with everything to make it perfect. Then it was repainted in the bill clinton administration. That is how it is conserved in the most professional standards now of conserving stone. Susan is this stone house here to stay . Mr. Seale i think so. I dont think a president would ever leave. Susan in the sense of conservation, i mean . Mr. Seale oh yes. It is lovingly cared for. You have the National Park service who have been the stewards of it since franklin roosevelt, 1933. No, it is watched very carefully. Of course we had the secret service all around watching. Anything that goes wrong is fixed. It is very carefully maintained, more so than the days of general grant when he called for the Fire Department to shoot the hose on it. Susan the great thing about you is there are always more stories but unfortunately have to end. Bill seale, whose latest book is called a white house of Stone Building americas first ideal in architecture. The old expression is always if these stones could talk. You have managed to make the stones talk in your new book. Thank you for telling the story. Youre watching American History tv, 48 hours of programming on American History every weekend on cspan3. Follow us on twitter for information on our schedule and to keep up with the latest history news. Announcer John Marshall was the fourth chief justice of the United States. He was appointed by john adams in 1801, and served until 1835. Next, legal scholars discussed at landmark cases decided during his tenure on the court and including mccullough versus maryland and marbury versus madison. Its just over one hour and 20 minutes. The professor founded the James Wilson Institute in 2013, and the mission of the institute is to restore to a new generation of lawyers and citizens the understanding of the american founders about the First Principles of our law and the moral grounds of their own rights, natural law. We offer programs for attorneys, law students, judges, and the public to advance the ideas of natural law or natural rights and the constitution. I wanted to mention a note about the house we are in today the house was built in 1825 during the first year of John Quincy Adams administration. He had just defeated jackson in a vote in the house of representatives that was a controversial election. The house was built by a builder who happened to be here in washington at the time in charge of the reconstruction of the white house and the capital building, which had been burnt by the british in the war of 1812. He happened also to be a friend of John Marshall and justice story, and because the court only met three times each year later on, justice fuller also lived here. As it happened, it was later bought by william carroll, this particular home, and he was the clerk of the Supreme Court for i think almost three decades. He was a friend of Abraham Lincoln, and in this room, Abraham Lincoln attended the marriage of the daughter of William Carol, so we are in an Historic Place in so many ways. One other note about William Carol he was the one who bought the lincoln bible. When lincoln came to washington, he forgot his bible or did not bring it with him to springfield, so carol bought a bible for him, used it during his inauguration, and until barack obama, no other president used that bible. Finally, i want to mention a couple of things about John Marshall historically, and then we will get on with our expert panel. John marshall lived from 1755 to 1835, and before being named to the Supreme Court, he grew up in virginia. He argued one case before the court, and he lost, although it was said that he had a very strong argument. He served for just not quite a year as secretary of state for president adams. He was a federalist, unlike his cousin or his relation, thomas jefferson, who was not a federalist. However, when john adams needed to appoint a chief justice, john jay, who had been the first chief justice, turned it down, writing that the court lacked weight and dignity. When that letter arrived from new york turning down the job, it happened to be that John Marshall was in president adams office. Adams turned to John Marshall and asked if he would like to be chief justice. He said yes, and that is the beginning of the great mans term as the fourth chief justice. He served under president s adams, jefferson, madison, monroe, and jackson, and truly made the Supreme Court a coequal branch of the government. With that, we want to turn to our first panel. It is chaired by professor hadley arcus, who started the James Wilson Institute. He taught for 50 years at amherst college. He was the neighbor for sir of he was the professor of political science. Hadley has written seven books including first things and beyond the constitution. They are all on amazon, im sure. With that, please introduce your panel. Thank you. Thank you. [applause] i think i am miced already. [inaudible] we are here today, as we should be hes taking in the suit. [laughter] they promised me alterations. As i said, we are here to savor again the work of John Marshall and his distinct contribution in the founding and shaping not only the court but the dimensions and reach of this new National Government under the constitution. He was not a member of the constitutional convention, but he was the third chief justice, coming in at the time of the jeffersonian revolution. It required, to put it gently, some high art of statecraft at that time. During the first striking example in history of the peaceful transfer of power from one party to another when those differences between the parties potentially marked the kinds of changes that were understood in other countries as revolutionary changes, or changes in the regime itself. One of the lingering messages of that period is that that particular significance still embedded in the parties, or in the politics of parties, is still there, from the differences between the parties, from the ins of government and the distribution of power may not only be principles and consistent, but often quite dramatic and their contrast and imply differences as deep as changes in regime. Its hard to imagine a better place for us to meet here. John marshall lived his last two years in this court. We thank mike for his involvement in this club that is proposed of members who people have served abroad. About 20 years ago, i was involved in a case in cincinnati where the voters in a referendum adopted an amendment to their city charter equivalent of their city constitution, and that amendment sought to bar and override ordinances, that barred discrimination based on sexual orientation. The judge in federal court a nice and thoughtful man seemed to be taken that what seemed to him the more liberal measure, the ordinance barring discrimination, had to take precedence over the more conservative measure which was the amendment to the constitution. What we had here was a case of a judge suggesting that an ordinance or a statute could take precedence over the local constitution. And so what we found ourselves taking time out to recall again John Marshalls teaching in marbury versus madison. There was ordinary law and the fundamental or basic law, which tells us how we get law. If you ask how do you get a federal law . A bill passed in two of houses of congress, signed by an executive. Well, how do we know that . How do we know we have a legislative body with two chambers . It is in the constitution. The basic law is the law that tells us how we get laws. And of course, it claims a logical preeminence over an ordinary statute. And so, marshall spoke the plain truth on this matter, marbury versus madison, pointing out the statute may override the provisions of the constitution. The constitution is put on the same plane as an ordinary statute, which may be superseded by the next statute. And under those conditions, the constitution would lose its function as a control. It would cease to be a constitution. This meeting brought to mind a moment in the early when 1980s with rex lee was solicitor general arguing for the Reagan Administration before the Supreme Court. In one moment in the case in the fall of 1982, as i recall, it was on abortion, and Justice Blackmun leaned in and said, are you asking us today to overrule roe v. Wade today . And he says, no, thats not what were asking today your honor. And he says, we are simply asking you to overrule marbury versus madison he showed that people tutored in the subject that marbury versus madison must be one of the most widely cited and least read. Blackmun spoke as though it somehow called the whole Constitutional Order into question if someone dared to suggest that the Supreme Court might have gotten it quite wrong on a major decision, that it could be salutary for the court to revisit that decision. Especially as you pointed out, lincoln cannot have raised his hand on march 4, 1861, and taken an oath to support the constitution if it were understood that that constitutional right articulated and the dred scott case, the right not to be dispossessed, everyone thought that that constitutional right were woven into the constitution as though it were in the text itself. Lincoln waged a National Campaign to counter and overturn that decision and through administrative means and congressional action, lincoln and his Republican Congress took the steps to overturn that decision well before the enactment of the 13th and 14th amendment. In marbury versus madison, John Marshall never claimed a monopoly of the authority to interpret the constitution. All he claimed was that in the course of exercising its own authority and hearing cases, the court may encounter a conflict between a statute and the constitution, and in that kind of case, the court would be obliged, of course, to respect the logic of the constitutional arrangement and give precedence to the fundamental law. Picking up on marshalls teaching, Justice George sutherland put it this way later. He said that when the court has to weigh the statute against the constitution, it is not engaging in the exercise of a substantive power to review and nullify acts of congress, for no such substantive power exists. It is simply a necessary concomitant of the power to hear and dispose of a case and controversy properly before the court. And in that respect, marshall claimed nothing for the court and the judges that would not be claimed by any other officer acting under the constitution, so if a president were faced with a bill to induct into the military service only members of a certain race, would he really be confined to the utilitarian question of if this measure would work, or would he be obliged no less than any judge, to consider if this measure was compatible with the underlying logic of the fundamental law . Scholars have written about judges in the p foundingeriod, in the founding period. They are teaching about the rule of law and the pencils of rendering justice. We have with us today two master teachers who have given a good measure of their days to illuminating that part of marshalls life. And what he taught. As republican schoolmaster, one case will always stand out that is so striking that i could not for bear at least to get in on the record. Even in the sketch of a minute. The case i have in mind i happen to love fletcher versus peck in 1810. Some of you may recall marshall and his colleagues struck down an attempt in georgia to cancel that he could settle a matter easily by bringing it up under article one section 10 and entering the obligation of contracts, but instead of doing that, he did something far more elegant. He showed how the contract talk could be drawn deductively with the force of a syllogism, from that deeper underlying principle. Something that was taken as a principled law that would have to be recognized of any entity that called itself a regime of law, and with that in place, he could do something as striking as saying georgia is a great state. It is part of this american empire. But even if georgia were a separate, sovereign state outside the union, outside the constitution, outside article one section 10, this law would still be wrong. Because its wrongness is rooted in a principled that does not depend at all for validity and be mentioned at all in the text. There i think he taught a deeper lesson. The constitution did not itself invent the enduring truths that underlie Constitutional Order and regime of law. Those truths were well in place before the constitution. The founders drew upon those principles as they set upon the task of framing the constitution. In the constitution we might say had an even deeper claim a standing as basic law when it draws upon those deep principles that will always be there and will be there even if there were no constitution. But let me give a proper introduction to two accomplished scholars, were so pleased to have with us today. They will be doing the principal talk. This panel is called landmark cases. Apart from their many writings, they are two seasoned, master teachers. To offer the proper fanfare i will introduce them separately so i can get them on the right way. David, a friend of many years, took his ba at harvard, his phd from toronto, a degree in law at columbia, has written with illumination on every angle of marbury versus madison with a command of the rich historical details, and the background of the laws and the layers contained in that opinion crafted by marshall. He has found his vocation and writing many scholarly articles and briefs on the pressing issues of the day. He serves as chief counsel to the u. S. Delegation to the United Nation sin the Reagan Administration. He served as consultant to the pontifical consul for the family of Pope John Paul ii and pope benedict. He held the distinguished fulbright chair and returned to l. A. As a visiting professor. In other words, he has been active as a scholar and teacher abroad in international forums. He was the inaugural holder of the griswold chair at the Cleveland School of law. He has taught for many years when he has not been abroad, but he has been active also in consulting on the drafting of legislation for the legislature in ohio, on matters ranging from International Trade to as federalism to fetal a heartbeats, and has immersed himself more fully in the life of a law as lived i know he has served as an active judge in the Municipal Court in lakewood, ohio, where he called home. So it has been a grand blending of the arts of rendering justice on the world stage and on the rights and wrongs of ordinary folk in the neighborhood. So would you join me in welcoming a dear friend . [applause] good afternoon. Good to see you all here. I am starting with a quote of John Marshalls. The government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws and not of men. So he said that in marbury versus madison, preaching the rule of law to his own federalist party, to the fellow justices on the Supreme Court, to the country, and to thomas jefferson. Who passed some of that. Deriving the phrase, a government of laws and not of men from john adams in the massachusetts constitution and ultimately from aristotle, marshall signaled that henceforth, his public life would be the law and the law would be his life. For marshall, the fabric of the rule of law was made of four interrelated kinds of law the common law, positive law, natural law, and constitutional law. And the greatest of these, with apologies to st. Paul, was constitutional law. The commonlaw provided the matrix of the rule of law. It contains causes of action, procedures, precedents, remedies, methods of reasoning. You cannot read a single opinion of John Marshall where you cannot hear the commonlaw lawyer speak. Forms of action, interpretive methodology. The whole stuff of the law is a commonlaw lawyer speaking. In his most famous case, marbury versus madison, for example, to determine whether mr. Marbury was entitled to his commission as justice of the peace that president jefferson had withheld, marshall engaged with commonlaw principles. Was there sufficiency of proof that the commission was, in fact signed and sealed . Was the remedy sought appropriate in the legal context . Was there jurisdiction at the end of the day for him . In addition to the commonlaw, John Marshall was extremely sensitive and respectful of the positive law. The actual laws that the republic, primarily through its legislative ranch, lays down as well as International Law and, of course, commonlaw itself had many positive contents. Crimes, which the Supreme Court toyed with until 1812 but more civil causes of action. Which were substantive. And these positive laws the court took judicial notice of, even the unwritten laws of International Law. In doing so, chief justice marshall, who was highly respectful of text, context, and history to determine the purpose of a statute so, for example, in barron versus baltimore, when he had to decide whether the fifth amendments protection against the taking of private property applied to the states, his very short opinion went through all those three elements. He first looked at the text to see whether it applied. He looked at where the text was placed in the constitution, and only at the end did he look to see what the history was which ratified textual interpretation, that the fifth amendment amendment did not, in fact, apply to the states. Natural law, the third element in the rule of law for marshall, was not a philosophical enterprise, as it was in some ways for james wilson, but it was a practical method of reasoning that yielded two results. One, was a set of moral axioms or selfevident truths, such as they see in the declaration of independence. So for example, in the case called the antelope, which dealt with the slave trade, marshall wrote, and im quoting, that every man has a natural right to the fruits of his own labor as generally admitted, and that no other person can rightfully deprive him of those fruits and appropriate them against his will seems to be the necessary result of this admission. The second kind of natural law that marshall embraced were a set of logical conclusions based on what he would call the nature of the thing. If you do a search of John Marshalls opinions, you will see that in virtually every opinion, there are six or a dozen or so references to the word nature. What is the nature of the power . What is the nature of this particular action . What is the nature of sovereignty . He was always going to the root of the thing that he was talking about. In barron versus baltimore, the one i just mentioned, it was in the nature of the powers granted to the central government, he said, that those powers were to be supreme over the states, even if there had not been a supremacy clause in the constitution