John Marshall (1755 - 1835), a Federalist from Virginia, was the nation's fourth chief justice. From 1801 - 1835, he led the United States Supreme Court and helped transform it into a powerful bastion of judicial review. In a series of seminal decisions the Marshall Court set forth fundamental doctrines of constitutional law intended to preserve the separation of powers and core principles of federalism essential in a democratic republic. Marshall was a judicial statesman whose genius lay in his implicit recognition of the promise of the Constitution and the role of the rule of law in a constitutional democracy.