NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote
Marbury v. Madison Marbury vs. Madison case is one of the most famous cases ever decided by the United States Supreme Court. The Court - in an opinion authored by Chief Justice John Marshall - ruled that it was not bound by an act of Congress that was repugnant to the Constitution. However, at the time it was issued, neither Marshall nor his chief adversary, Thomas Jefferson, could have imagined the further growth and acceptance of the power of judicial review that Marbury declared.
In the same way could they have guessed on the extent to which Marbury would become the poster child of the American legal system. The Supreme Court had actually declared an act of Congress unconstitutional in 1794 (Manning). Nevertheless, no opinions were announced in that case, and thus it remained for Marshall to seize the opportunity in Marbury to provide a rationale for judicial review. It is interesting how the decision that was made 200 years ago still matters to the modern American society. The formal dispute that the case resolved was itself of minor significance. It was an issue of political patronage, pitting the ascendant Jeffersonians against the (soon-to-be) departing Federalists.
The simmering feud between them was intense. The case can only be understood against the background of the election of 1800, in which Thomas Jefferson defeated the incumbent president, John Adams, and his Democrat-Republican party also gained control of the Congress (Landman). In those days, there was a long lame duck period between the November election and the inauguration of a new president. The Congress that met in December 1800 was the old Congress. So the Federalists still controlled the government until March 4, 1801. Adams appointed John Marshall as Secretary of State, and then appointed him also as Chief Justice of the United States when that position became vacant.
The Federalist-dominated Congress passed the Judiciary Act of 1801, which created circuit courts of appeal much like they are today, and relieved the justices of the Supreme Court of their obligation to ride circuit. It also increased the jurisdiction of the federal courts. Adams immediately appointed 16 new judges to these courts - all Federalists, who were all were confirmed by the Senate (Manning). On February 27, 1801, just days before Jefferson was to take office, Congress passed another bill.
The Justice of the Peace Act provided Adams with the opportunity to appoint 42 justices of the peace to five-year terms in Washington and Alexandria. Most of Adams nominations went to deserving Federalists, and all were confirmed by the Senate. William Marbury was one of those appointed. Marbury was born in Maryland on a tobacco plantation, had achieved great success as a financier, with strong ties to the Federalists, and he had become quite prominent in Washington. He and several others brought a lawsuit to compel Madison to deliver their commissions. They asked the Supreme Court, in its original jurisdiction, to issue a writ of mandamus - a court order directing Madison (but really Jefferson) to carry out his lawful and non-discretionary duty to deliver the commissions.
Almost all constitutional law students in America begin with the Marbury case, and that, actually, makes perfect sense this case is generally considered to be the foundation of the modern state - no other case from this period offers so much. The case explains such questions as: what should the role of constitutional courts be? What should the shape and extent of judicial review be? What are the limits of judicial activism? Why are checks and balances, and the idea of limited government, essential to constitutional government? How can, and why should, a country commit itself to constitutional rule and the rule of law? (Bloch) The decision was based on Marshalls interpretation of two documents: Section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 (Section 13), and portions of Article III of the Constitution - which defines the powers of the federal judiciary.
Among other provisions, Article III defines the Supreme Courts original jurisdiction - that is, the few types of cases that can be brought directly to the Supreme Court. In all other cases, Article III makes clear, the Supreme Court has only appellate jurisdiction. Article III also says that the Courts appellate jurisdiction is subject to such Exceptions and... Regulations as the Congress shall make. No such provision is made with respect to the Courts original jurisdiction. The Constitution thus implicitly suggests that, in contrast, the Courts original jurisdiction is not subject to congressional regulation (Manning).
So, the fundamental question in that case was: did the Supreme Court have the jurisdiction (for example, the constitutional authority) to issue the writ of mandamus that Marbury sought? Marshall argued that in Section 13, Congress had improperly attempted to add to the Courts original jurisdiction, as Article III implied Congress could never do. Congress did so, according to Marshall, by conferring on the Supreme Court power to issue a writ of mandamus - that is, an order compelling an official to carry out a non-discretionary (ministerial) act. However, there are some problems with this argument. First, Article III appears to prohibit Congress from making exceptions to (that is, subtractions from), or regulations of the Courts original jurisdiction. Yet it never says Congress cannot add to that jurisdiction (Devin's).
Second, in what sense does the power to issue a writ of mandamus that Section 13 granted actually add to the Courts jurisdiction at all? A writ of mandamus is not a new type of case. And jurisdiction, according to Article III as well as the common understanding of the term, has to do with types of cases (or parties), not mechanisms of judicial power. Marshall could easily have assumed that Section 13 merely gave the Supreme Court the power to issue a writ of mandamus in cases in which it already had jurisdiction.
He, however, understood that otherwise the Court had no authority to hear Marbury's case in its original jurisdiction, and that would have removed the opportunity for him to proclaim the power of judicial review because Congress would not then have acted unconstitutionally (Devin's). At the same time as he was interpreting the Constitution both narrowly (holding that Section 13 was unconstitutional) and broadly (that even though it was not mentioned specifically, judicial review was implied by Article III), Marshall was establishing an important duality. Although the Constitution was higher law, paramount to all other law, and not to be easily amended, it could nevertheless be interpreted and molded to achieve important societal and institutional goals (Bloch). After losing in the Supreme Court the plaintiffs could have applied to the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia for the writ of mandamus that would have gotten them their commissions.
The D. C. Circuit clearly had the power to issue the writ. Georgetown Law professor Susan Low Bloch has recently offered an explanation to solve this mystery. She suggests that perhaps the plaintiffs really were not interested in the commissions. After all, they were to a low level court, and expired in only three years (Bloch).
Certainly Marshall made a strong argument for judicial review as a power of the Supreme Court. His argument, however, for exclusive monopoly power is quite weak. He argued that it is, emphatically, the province and duty of the judicial department, to say what the law is. But while he establishes fidelity to the Constitution as the judiciary's duty, he does not necessarily demonstrate that it is only the judiciary's province - as opposed to the province of all three branches of government. For example, Marshall notes that in a written constitution of enumerated powers, the constitution is superior to ordinary law.
It is a difficult question how much judicial review Marshall was claiming because even the Constitution does not mention such a power. Technically, one could describe the outcome in Marbury as a defensive maneuver - the Court claiming only enough power to protect itself from powers improperly conferred on it by Congress - and thus only a modest and limited charter of judicial review, under which each branch could protect itself from the unconstitutional actions of the other branches. And one can certainly see in Marshalls opinion concerns about the consequences of judicial overreaching (Devin's). In todays debates over how to interpret the Constitution, Marshalls opinion in Marbury would certainly place him in the interpretivist category of non-originality judges who reject the claim that the Constitution means only exactly what it says, or its framers clearly intended. Marshall was at least arguably the first judicial activist.
So what would happen, if the right of judicial review in the Marbury v. Madison case had not been established? The pre-Marshall court was the first in the world to be presented with the terrifying task of figuring out how to work this new Constitution into the framework of existing law - there were never before any written national constitutions, nothing to guide them, " Clinton says. Some of their contemporaries thought the Constitution was nothing more than a charter, a set of guidelines on how to run the fledgling nation, he says. Its quite possible that if the pre-Marshall court had not been willing to interpret certain provisions in the small number of cases they had decided by the time Marshall took the bench, everyone would have considered the Constitution in that light. We can better understand the early Court if we understand the legal philosophy of its justices, Clinton writes.
They subscribed to the longstanding concept of natural law: the notion that the essence of the law existed before it was expressed in written texts such as statutes or constitutions. Their opinions were efforts to find or discover the true constitutional principle underlying the text. It would be difficult to find a better primer of judicial activism than the Marbury opinion. Indeed, in his originality treatise, Marbury was an activist opinion that epitomized a loose construction of the Constitution, but embraced the decision nonetheless because it had produced a good result. Finally, and perhaps most important, there is the issue of the compatibility of judicial review with principles of democracy. There probably is an inescapable tension between the rule of law and popular sovereignty.
Today the implications of that dilemma are debated in the framework of Alexander Bickels contention that judicial review poses a counter majoritarian difficulty. (Melhorn) Bickel argued that because of this tension, non-elected judges must show great restraint in overturning laws passed by the peoples representatives. They have an obligation to make principled decisions, and to intervene in the political process only when absolutely necessary - when there has been a clear mistake. (Melhorn) Bickels critics note, however, that ours is not a pure majoritarian system. It is a constitutional democracy with a commitment to individual rights that presupposes limits on majority rule. No one can solve this debate, but no one can ignore it either (Melhorn). Marbury v. Madison held that Congress could not enlarge the Supreme Court's jurisdiction as set forth in the Constitution.
McCulloch v. Maryland upheld Congress's right to establish a federal bank. And Gibbons v. Ogden described Congress commerce power so expansively as to limit the legislative authority of the states.
In these landmark cases and in others, the Marshall court fully asserted the power of the judicial branch of federal government. The bottom line is that Marbury v. Madison, with all its imperfections and contradictions, continues to attract the universal attention. It created a model of judicial independence. It established the fundamental architecture of constitutional review. It planted the seed for the political questions doctrine, and enriched the separation of power principle through Marshalls emphasis on the distinction between ministerial acts.
Acts, which judges could review, and discretionary political acts, which it could or should not. Works cited: Bloch, Susan Low; The Marbury mystery: why did William Marbury sue in the Supreme Court? December 22, 2001; Constitutional Commentary; Dr. Robert Lowry Clinton, The Marbury Myth, article Devin's, Neal, How not to challenge the Court, February 1, 1998; William and Mary Law Review; Landman, James H. ; Marbury v. Madison: bicentennial of a landmark decision, November 01, 2002; Social Education; Manning, Steven; Marbury v. Madison: a landmark decision made 200 years ago changed the Supreme Court forever, January 24, 2003; Junior Scholastic; Melhorn, Donald F. , Jr. ; A moot court exercise: debating judicial review prior to Marbury v.
Madison, December 22, 1995; Constitutional Commentary;
Free research essays on topics related to: supreme court, judicial activism, power of judicial review, 200 years ago, rule of law
Research essay sample on 200 Years Ago Power Of Judicial Review
