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The antebellum decades saw continuing disputes over the federal judiciary’s structure; the balance between political control of the Court and judicial independence; and the orientation of the Court toward pressing political issues, including commerce, migration, and slavery.

The election of Andrew Jackson as President in 1828, and the related rise of the Democratic Party to national political dominance, was viewed by many contemporaries as “a kind of revolution” akin to that which had swept Jefferson into office in 1800. Jackson’s two terms as President, from 1829 to 1837, brought a bold Executive who claimed broad powers, the rise of modern party politics, and the entrenchment of sectionalism. Jacksonian nationalism aimed, in the words of one historian, to “maintain white supremacy and expand the white empire, to evict the Indian tribes, [and] to support and extend slavery.”

These imperatives had important consequences for the federal judiciary in three distinct areas: the role of the Supreme Court and its relationship to contemporary politics; the structure of the federal courts, in particular the ongoing debate over the Justices’ circuit riding; and the related issue of the size of the Court. Throughout this period, the Court was embroiled in important issues relating to the separation of powers (the Court’s relationship to the President and Congress) and federalism (the relationship between the Court and the states, including both state courts and legislatures).

First, the Supreme Court continued to be viewed by contemporaries as an institution that was necessarily involved in politics. Prior to Chief Justice Marshall’s death in 1835, the Court took stances in a few high-profile cases that appeared to be carefully calculated acts of resistance to Jeffersonian-Republican policies. In McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) and Osborn v. Bank of the United States (1824), the Court upheld the constitutionality of the Second Bank of the United States against attacks on it by several states and by then-candidate Jackson. Chief Justice Marshall published a series of newspaper essays under a pseudonym in which he defended the McCulloch decision against arguments that the Bank represented an overreach by Congress and an invasion of state sovereignty. During Jackson’s presidency, the Marshall Court heard a pair of cases brought by the Cherokee Nation in which the tribe sought to vindicate its jurisdiction and ownership of lands against the state of Georgia. Jackson had campaigned for the presidency on a promise of “Indian removal,” and, in 1830, a closely