Marbury v. Madison and Judicial Review
In the history of the Supreme Court, no case has been more consequential than the 1803 case of Marbury v. Madison.
The case arose from a political dispute that, by itself, was fairly minor. But the ruling that Chief Justice John Marshall issued to resolve it transformed the role of the federal judiciary and established a principle that remains at the heart of American constitutional law more than two centuries later.
The Background
The case grew out of the bitter presidential election of 1800, in which Thomas Jefferson defeated the incumbent John Adams. In the final days of his administration, Adams worked quickly to appoint as many fellow Federalists as possible to federal positions before Jefferson took office. One of those appointees was William Marbury, who was named a justice of the peace for the District of Columbia.
The problem was that the official paperwork confirming Marbury's appointment, called a commission, was not delivered before Adams left office. When Jefferson took over, his Secretary of State, James Madison, refused to deliver the commission. Marbury went directly to the Supreme Court, asking it to issue an order forcing Madison to deliver the document. This type of order is called a writ of mandamus.
Marshall's Dilemma
Chief Justice John Marshall faced a difficult situation. Politically, he was a Federalist who sympathized with Marbury's position. But he also recognized that if he ordered Madison to deliver the commission, Jefferson's administration would likely simply ignore the order, humiliating the Court and weakening its authority. He needed a way to resolve the case that would strengthen the Court's long-term power even if it meant ruling against Marbury in the short term.
The Ruling
Marshall's solution was elegant. He ruled that Marbury was indeed entitled to his commission and that Madison was wrong to withhold it. But he also ruled that the Supreme Court could not help Marbury, because the law Marbury had used to bring his case directly to the Supreme Court was itself unconstitutional.
The Judiciary Act of 1789 gave the Supreme Court the power to issue orders (called writs of mandamus) to make government officials do their duties. But Marshall ruled that this expanded the Court's original jurisdiction beyond what the Constitution permitted. Since the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, any law that contradicts it must be invalid. Therefore, the Judiciary Act's provision was void, and the Court had no authority to hear Marbury's case.
The Significance: Judicial Review
By ruling this way, Marshall established the principle of judicial review: the power of the Supreme Court to strike down laws that violate the Constitution. This power is not explicitly written anywhere in the Constitution, but Marshall argued persuasively that it was implied by the very nature of a written constitution.
If the Constitution is the supreme law, someone must have the authority to say when a law conflicts with it. That authority, Marshall concluded, belongs to the courts.
Judicial review has proven to be one of the most important and far-reaching principles in American constitutional history. It transformed the Supreme Court from a relatively weak institution into the final arbiter of constitutional meaning.
Every time the Court strikes down a law passed by Congress or a state legislature, it is exercising the power established in Marbury v. Madison. The case turned a minor political dispute into one of the most significant legal decisions in American history.
