common law, but U.S. politicians, lawyers, and communities shaped and altered that foundation to address uniquely American issues such as land settlement. The country's fledgling court system showed little inclination to use law as a device to enforce Christian concepts of morality, instead devoting its attention to the issues of property, business, and commercial contracts. As judicial decisions proliferated, they formed a body of case law that often addressed questions not yet discussed by the country's legislative arms. "Instead of upholding the ideal of a stable and balanced social order," noted the authors of The Great Republic, "the law gave increasing priority to economic growth," encouraging individual enterprise, initiative, and competition. Several legal decisions rendered during the first half of the nineteenth century had an enduring impact on both the nature of the American legal system and the sociological landscape of thecountry. In 1803 the Supreme Court's decision in the case of Marbury v. Madison, authored by Chief Justice John Marshall, established the judicial branch's authority to invalidate federal laws that it deemed unconstitutional, a power that has been invoked with significant effect in the ensuing two centuries of America's history. Other Supreme Court decisions (such as McCulloch v. Maryland in 1819 and Cohens v. Virginia in 1821) asserted the sovereignty of federal law over state law, thus strengthening the hand of Congress and confirming the power of the Constitution. Another landmark legal decision reflected America's struggle with the issue of slavery. The 1857 Dred Scott decision, which denied the appeal of a slave who petitioned for freedom on the grounds of his extended stints in "free" territory, further inflamed passions concerning the subject, and many scholars argue that the decision made the Civil War inevitable. The sociological make-up of the American people underwent a dramatic transformation...
