Marbury v. Madison

Many of our most cherished freedoms in modern America stemmed from the wise rulings of the Supreme Court. The stability of the federal government's regulatory powers, many claim, lay in the court's decision in Gibbons v. Ogden. In Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ensured that no public school operating in the United States would separate or segregate students because of their race. The 1950s, 1960s, and, to a lesser extent, 1970s saw a plurality of the judicial branch's most celebrated and significant actions: Mapp v. Ohio ensured that illegally-obtained evidence could not be used at trials. Gideon v. Wainwright provided a free lawyer to any suspect otherwise unable to afford an attorney. Miranda v. Arizona established the precedent of the Miranda rights, requiring all police to inform suspects of their legal rights during arrest. Loving v. Virginia required all 16 states with a ban on interracial marriage to dismantle those anachronistic, tyrannical rules. Education, too, has been shaped by the Supreme Court, with Yoder v. Wisconsin allowing students to leave school for religious reasons and Tinker v. Des Moines clarifying the freedom of speech possessed by students.

We take these reforms and policies for granted. We can't imagine a world without these precedents and civic givens. But perhaps, what shocks us even more is the idea of an America lacking the presence of judicial review. Like many of the cases mentioned in the above paragraph, Americans are more familiar with the concept of judicial review than they are with the name. Judicial review refers to the broad power of the judicial branch to review the constitutionality of bills and statutes, halting the enforcement of any law unable to survive the probe. Whenever we hear of the passage of a law we dislike or believe infringes on our basic Constitutional rights, we automatically begin dreaming of the day when a court gifted with wisdom (or our perception of wisdom!) hollows out the law for its transgressions on Constitutional standards. But judicial review was not always the law of the land. In fact, it is never mentioned or implied in the Constitution. Instead, it was born in 1803, 16 years after the Constitution was written, with the case of Marbury v. Madison.

In 1800, John Adams was running for reelection. Securing for the second time in a row the nomination of the Federalist Party, his opponent was Thomas Jefferson, the reluctant nominee of the Democratic-Republican Party. Like the Democratic and Republican Parties in modern America, the Federalist and Democratic-Republican Parties sat on opposite ends of the acceptable political spectrum. A conservative group populated by advocates of additional hierarchy and a strong federal government, the Federalists wanted to maintain education's status as a privilege rather than a right, abolish slavery, restrict immigration, industrialize the US, implement high tariffs, and set up strong relations between America and Britain. The Democratic-Republicans, meanwhile, were leftists who called for reduced hierarchy, states' rights, loose immigration laws, transforming education into a tax-payer-funded right accessible to all children, maintaining agrarian economics, free trade, and close relations with France, falling head-over-heels in love with the French Revolution.

Fearing for America's fate under Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans, Adams spent the remainder of his tenure working to stifle the Jefferson Administration before the president-elect even took the oath of office. On February 13, 1801, Adams signed the Judiciary Act of 1801. This bill reformed circuit courts, i.e. courts responsible for a collection of states rather than one specific state or a region within one specific state. Prior to the 1801 law, any time a circuit court was asked to hear a case, a member of the Supreme Court would have to leave Washington DC, travel to the headquarters of the circuit court, and hear arguments themselves. The Judiciary Act of 1801 terminated this practice (known as circuit riding) and instead chartered an office in each individual circuit court tasked with managing circuit-wide cases. On February 27, 1801, Adams signed the District of Columbia Organic Act, setting up a judicial system for the capital city.

Throughout the final weeks and days of his presidency, Adams worked to appoint judges to all these new positions. The idea of these two laws was very obvious to most Americans at the time: Since Adams was a Federalist, he would flood the judicial branch with fellow Federalists, preventing Jefferson from enforcing his legislative agenda. During this period in American history, there was a rule saying that whenever someone received a government office, they needed to obtain a commission - i.e. a slip of paper signed and stamped by the president before being delivered to the appointee by the secretary of state - before they could actually complete the duties associated with that office. However, because of how little time Adams had in office before being replaced by Jefferson, he couldn't direct his secretary of state to give out all of the commissions before his term expired. On March 4, 1801, Jefferson replaced Adams as president, with many of the commissions still waiting to be handed out.

Like most people, Jefferson quickly realized what his predecessor was secretly doing with the Judiciary Act of 1801 and the DC Organic Act. For this reason, he ordered his secretary of state, future-President James Madison, to withhold the commissions from the judges Adams appointed. Among those selected by Adams was William Marbury, who he nominated for a judicial position in Washington DC. When Marbury learned that Jefferson and Madison were purposefully hiding his commission, he became irate. Furious, he sued Madison, registering the case of Marbury v. Madison. On February 11, 1803, the Supreme Court heard arguments, issuing its opinion just under 2 weeks later on February 24, 1803.

John Marshall, who chaired the Supreme Court from 1801 to his death in 1835, wrote the opinion. The whole ordeal had placed Marshall and the majority Federalist Supreme Court in a very difficult, almost labyrinthine situation. The case, as Marshall explained in the opinion, hinged on two questions: One, did Marbury have a right to his commission, and two, if such a right did exist, then could the Supreme Court enforce it? The first question proved to be the source of Marshall's troubles. If he said that Marbury did not have a right to the commission, then he would embarrass the court by making it look spineless and capitulating. Just as apparent as it was that Adams was trying to stuff the judicial branch with Federalists, it was equally apparent that Jefferson was trying to purge the judicial branch of Adams and Hamilton supporters. If Marbury was expressly denied his right to the commission, then Marshall would appear to be giving in to Jefferson's demands. If they said that Marbury did have a right to the commission, they'd have no way of getting Jefferson to listen, which would also humiliate the court.

Instead of picking between these poisons, Marshall found a middle ground. And it was a brilliant middle ground, a middle ground that not only spared the Supreme Court unimaginable humiliation but also established it as an equal to its siblings: The executive and legislative branches. In answering the first question, Marshall claimed that Marbury indeed did have a right to the commissions Adams had signed. But Marbury's cheers and hoorahs would not live very long. To answer the second question - the question of if the Supreme Court could enforce Marbury's right to the commission - Marshall said no. His logic was simple, but revolutionary for the time! The only way the Supreme Court could enforce Marbury's right was through a writ of mandamus. Explained simply, a writ of mandamus is an order issued by a court mandating that a public official or corporate manager take some specific action. In this case, Secretary of State James Madison would have to give Marbury his commission.

What was so bad about the Supreme Court releasing a writ of mandamus? According to Marshall, it would be unconstitutional. The only mechanism through which the Supreme Court could issue a writ of mandamus - and by extension, enforce Marbury's right to the commission - was the Judiciary Act of 1789. Signed by George Washington, the Judiciary Act of 1789 extended the power of issuing writs of mandamus to the Supreme Court. However, this went beyond the Supreme Court's constitutional power, Marshall explained. In Article III (the portion of the Constitution that chartered the judicial branch), the Supreme Court is given only 2 powers. Those powers were deciding cases that lower courts couldn't provide a verdict to and settling cases involving government officials. Nowhere is a writ of mandamus mentioned. For the first time in US history, the Supreme Court overturned a federal statute, creating a precedent of the Supreme Court being able to nullify any law it dubbed unconstitutional.

Almost inarguably, Marbury v. Madison was the most important Supreme Court ruling ever made. Truly inarguably, it is at least worthy of being ranked alongside other important cases, like Loving v. Virginia and Engel v. Vitale. This is not because Marbury v. Madison brought about any immediate shift in the structure of American politics of the enforcement of US law. Rather, Marbury v. Madison is important because of what it facilitated in the future. Roger B. Taney, Earl Warren, and John Marshall himself all made extremely important decisions with their power over the Supreme Court, which affected Americans' lives and continues to impact the lives of US citizens. But they would not have had that influence they wielded were it not for this complex kerfuffle over judicial offices, commissions, and writs of mandamus. Even a different ruling would have rendered this influence nugatory. A different ruling or the non-existence of this case may very well have caused the Supreme Court to become one or two sentences in the whole of US history, never escaping its tiny room in the Capitol Building.