Marshalling McCulloch

David Schwartz’s terrific new book is subtitled John Marshall and the 200-Year Odyssey of McCulloch v. Maryland. But the book is about much more than Marshall and McCulloch. It’s about the long struggle over the scope of national power. Marshall and McCulloch are characters in the story, but the story isn’t centrally about them.

Indeed, an important part of Schwartz’s narrative is that McCulloch has mattered relatively little in that struggle, except as a protean symbol.