The University of Illinois – Chicago announced yesterday that it is dropping the "John Marshall" part of its UIC-John Marshall Law School name. (UIC's law school is unrelated to Atlanta's John Marshall Law School.) A task force had been reviewing the issue of whether, given Marshall's involvement with slavery, his name should remain on the law school. UIC's presser stated:
The task force report noted, “that despite Chief Justice Marshall’s legacy as one of the nation’s most significant U.S. Supreme Court justices, the newly discovered research regarding his role as a slave trader, slave owner of hundreds of slaves, pro-slavery jurisprudence, and racist views render him a highly inappropriate namesake for the Law School.”
UIC merged with the private John Marshall Law School in 2019. The school will now simply be known as the University of Illinois – Chicago School of Law.
More importantly, Marshall set constitutional jurisprudence on a ruinous path well nigh from the country's outset with the obviously disingenuous and erroneous decisions of Marbury v Madison and McCulloch v Maryland, cases which scream to be overturned unto this day.
This is yet another case of political correctness run amuck.
Ever since they merged with UIC, this has been on the way, and there's a similar dynamic happening at UNH. The alumni/donors don't want to change the name, but changing the name will allow them to attract a broader swath of students. Situating it as a "we have to change the name because racist" is being used mostly as an excuse to reframe the debate to get the change done over alumni objections.