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How did Marbury v Madison establish the principle of judicial review?
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What is Marbury v Madison & Dred Scott?
Why did Marbury ask the Supreme Court to issue a writ of mandamus?
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Nov 13, 2009 · On February 24, 1803, the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John Marshall, decides the landmark case of William Marbury v. James Madison, Secretary of State of the United States and...
- Missy Sullivan
- 3 min
- Overview
- Background
- The decision
Marbury v. Madison (1803) is a legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court asserted for itself and the lower courts created by Congress the power of judicial review, by means of which legislation, as well as executive and administrative actions, deemed inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution could be declared unconstitutional and therefore null and void. State courts eventually assumed a parallel power with respect to state constitutions.
Why did Marbury v. Madison happen?
Marbury v. Madison arose after the administration of U.S. Pres. Thomas Jefferson withheld from William Marbury a judgeship commission that had been formalized in the last days of the preceding John Adams administration but not delivered before Jefferson’s inauguration. Ruling on a request by Marbury, the U.S. Supreme Court held that it could not order the surrender of the commission because the law that would have empowered it to do so was unconstitutional.
Why is Marbury v. Madison important?
Marbury v. Madison is important because it established the power of judicial review for the U.S. Supreme Court and lower federal courts with respect to the Constitution and eventually for parallel state courts with respect to state constitutions. The exercise of judicial review would help to ensure that the judiciary remained a coequal branch of government alongside the legislative and executive branches.
How did Marbury v. Madison strengthen the federal judiciary?
In the weeks before Thomas Jefferson’s inauguration as president in March 1801, the lame-duck Federalist Congress created 16 new circuit judgeships (in the Judiciary Act of 1801) and an unspecified number of new judgeships (in the Organic Act), which Adams proceeded to fill with Federalists in an effort to preserve his party’s control of the judiciary and to frustrate the legislative agenda of Jefferson and his Republican (Democratic-Republican) Party. Because he was among the last of those appointments (the so-called “midnight appointments”), William Marbury, a Federalist Party leader from Maryland, did not receive his commission before Jefferson became president. Once in office, Jefferson directed his secretary of state, James Madison, to withhold the commission, and Marbury petitioned the Supreme Court to issue a writ of mandamus to compel Madison to act.
Marbury and his lawyer, former attorney general Charles Lee, argued that signing and sealing the commission completed the transaction and that delivery, in any event, constituted a mere formality. But formality or not, without the actual piece of parchment, Marbury could not enter into the duties of office. Despite Jefferson’s hostility, the court agreed to hear the case, Marbury v. Madison, in its February 1803 term.
Some scholars have questioned whether Marshall should have removed himself from the case because of his prior service as Adams’s secretary of state (1800–01). Certainly, later judicial standards would have called for recusal, but at the time only financial connections to a case led judges to step aside, as Marshall did in suits regarding Virginia lands in which he had an interest. The Republicans, always quick to criticize Marshall, did not even raise the issue of the propriety of his sitting in the case.
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The issue directly presented by Marbury v. Madison can only be described as minor. By the time the court heard the case, the wisdom of Jefferson’s desire to reduce the number of justices of the peace had been confirmed (and the Judiciary Act of 1801 had been repealed); Marbury’s original term was almost half over; and most people, Federalists and Republicans alike, considered the case to be moot. But Marshall, despite the political difficulties involved, recognized that he had a perfect case with which to expound a basic principle, judicial review, which would secure the Supreme Court’s primary role in constitutional interpretation.
The chief justice recognized the dilemma that the case posed to the court. If the court issued the writ of mandamus, Jefferson could simply ignore it, because the court had no power to enforce it. If, on the other hand, the court refused to issue the writ, it would appear that the judicial branch of government had backed down before the executive, and that Marshall would not allow. The solution he chose has properly been termed a tour de force. In one stroke, Marshall managed to establish the power of the court as the ultimate arbiter of the Constitution, to chastise the Jefferson administration for its failure to obey the law, and to avoid having the court’s authority challenged by the administration.
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Marshall, adopting a style that would mark all his major opinions, reduced the case to a few basic issues. He asked three questions: (1) Did Marbury have the right to the commission? (2) If he did, and his right had been violated, did the law provide him with a remedy? (3) If it did, would the proper remedy be a writ of mandamus from the Supreme Court? The last question, the crucial one, dealt with the jurisdiction of the court, and in normal circumstances it would have been answered first, since a negative response would have obviated the need to decide the other issues. But that would have denied Marshall the opportunity to criticize Jefferson for what the chief justice saw as the president’s flouting of the law.
Following the arguments of Marbury’s counsel on the first two questions, Marshall held that the validity of a commission existed once a president signed it and transmitted it to the secretary of state to affix the seal. Presidential discretion ended there, for the political decision had been made, and the secretary of state had only a ministerial task to perform—delivering the commission. In that the law bound him, like anyone else, to obey. Marshall drew a careful and lengthy distinction between the political acts of the president and the secretary, in which the courts had no business interfering, and the simple administrative execution that, governed by law, the judiciary could review.
Having decided that Marbury had the right to the commission, Marshall next turned to the question of remedy, and once again found in the plaintiff’s favour, holding that “having this legal title to the office, [Marbury] has a consequent right to the commission, a refusal to deliver which is a plain violation of that right, for which the laws of his country afford him a remedy.” After castigating Jefferson and Madison for “sport[ing] away the vested rights of others,” Marshall addressed the crucial third question. Although he could have held that the proper remedy was a writ of mandamus from the Supreme Court—because the law that had granted the court the power of mandamus in original (rather than appellate) jurisdiction, the Judiciary Act of 1789, was still in effect—he instead declared that the court had no power to issue such a writ, because the relevant provision of the act was unconstitutional. Section 13 of the act, he argued, was inconsistent with Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution, which states in part that “the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction” in “all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party,” and that “in all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction.” In thus surrendering the power derived from the 1789 statute (and giving Jefferson a technical victory in the case), Marshall gained for the court a far-more-significant power, that of judicial review.
Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that established the principle of judicial review, meaning that American courts have the power to strike down laws and statutes they find to violate the Constitution of the United States.
Dec 2, 2009 · Madison began in January 1801, when President John Adams, who had been defeated in his reelection bid, had to fill the Chief Justice seat on the U.S. Supreme Court that was being vacated by...
Jun 7, 2021 · The U.S. Supreme Court case Marbury v. Madison (1803) established the principle of judicial review—the power of the federal courts to declare legislative and executive acts unconstitutional. The unanimous opinion was written by Chief Justice John Marshall.
Oct 1, 2024 · Marbury v. Madison (1803) was a landmark Supreme Court case in which Chief Justice John Marshall established the principle of judicial review, granting the Supreme Court the power to declare laws unconstitutional.
List of important facts regarding Marbury v. Madison. This landmark case of the U.S. Supreme Court was decided on February 24, 1803. The decision was the first in which the Court declared an act of Congress unconstitutional, thus establishing the doctrine of judicial review.
