In the sense of executive legal officer the title marshal survives in the United States of America in two senses. The United States marshal is the executive officer of the Federal courts, one being appointed for each district, or exceptionally, one for two districts. His duties are to open and close the sessions of the district and circuit courts, serve warrants, and execute throughout the district the orders of the court. There are United States marshals also in Alaska, Hawaii, Porto Rico and the Philippines. They are appointed by the President, with the advice and consent of the Senate, for a term of four years, and, besides their duties in connexion with the courts, are employed in the service of the internal revenue, public lands, post office, &c. The temporary police sworn in to maintain order in times of disturbance, known in England as special constables, are also termed marshals in the United States. In some of the southern and western states of the Union the title marshal has sunk to that of the village policeman, as distinct from the county officers known as sheriffs and those of the justices' courts called constables.
In England the title of marshal, as applied to an executive officer, survives only in the army, where the provost marshal is chief of the military police in large garrisons and in field forces. Office and title were borrowed from the French _prévot des maréchaux_, the modern equivalent of the medieval _praepositus marescalcorum_ or _guerrarum_.
MARSHALL, ALFRED (1842- ), English economist, was born in London on the 26th of July 1842. He was educated at the Merchant Taylors' School and St John's College, Cambridge, being second wrangler in 1865, and in the same year becoming fellow of his college. He became principal of University College, Bristol, in 1877, and was lecturer and fellow of Balliol College, Oxford in 1883-1884. He was professor of political economy at Cambridge University from 1885 to 1908, and was a member of the Royal Commission on Labour in 1891. He became a fellow of the British Academy in 1902. He wrote (in conjunction with his wife) _Economics of Industry_ (1879), whilst his _Principles of Economics_ (1st ed., 1890) is a standard English treatise.