Marbury v. Madison: Judicial Review Established

John Marshall handed his political enemies a victory and claimed a power far greater than anything at stake in the case. The chief justice's opinion in Marbury v. Madison, issued on February 24, 1803, is the most consequential judicial decision in American history — not because of what it decided, but because of what it established. For the first time, the Supreme Court declared an act of Congress unconstitutional, asserting the power of judicial review that the Constitution never explicitly grants. The case arose from the messy transition between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. In the final hours of his presidency, Adams appointed dozens of Federalist judges to lock in judicial influence before Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans took power. Several commissions, including one for William Marbury as a justice of the peace, were signed and sealed but never delivered. Jefferson's new secretary of state, James Madison, refused to hand them over. Marbury sued, asking the Supreme Court to issue a writ of mandamus compelling delivery. Marshall, himself a last-minute Adams appointee as chief justice, crafted a masterful opinion that threaded an impossible political needle. He ruled that Marbury was entitled to his commission, that Madison's refusal was unlawful, and that a legal remedy should exist. Then he pulled the rug out: the section of the Judiciary Act of 1789 that gave the Supreme Court original jurisdiction to issue such writs was unconstitutional because it expanded the Court's authority beyond what Article III permitted. Marbury lost his commission, but the Court gained something immeasurable. Jefferson could not object to a ruling that went against his opponent, and Congress could not challenge a decision that struck down its own law. Marshall had established that the judiciary is the final arbiter of what the Constitution means. Every major Supreme Court ruling since — from Dred Scott to Brown v. Board of Education to Roe v. Wade — rests on the foundation Marshall laid in this deceptively modest case about an undelivered piece of paper.