History of the United States I / Unit 8 USH1 1090 review, 2 to 3 minutes
Marbury v. Madison
The idea
Adams appointed numerous Federalists to judicial posts in his final days in office, and Jefferson refused to deliver their commissions. William Marbury, named a justice of the peace for the District of Columbia, petitioned the Supreme Court against Secretary of State Madison. Chief Justice John Marshall held that Marbury had the right to a legal remedy, establishing that even presidential power could not abridge individual rights. But he then held that the Judiciary Act of seventeen eighty-nine was unconstitutional, because the Constitution did not permit such cases to come directly before the Court. That holding established judicial review, empowering courts to review and possibly nullify the actions of Congress and the president.
In practice
A court declining the power to help the man standing in front of it, and taking a far larger and more permanent power in the same opinion.
Where people slip
Two things students get backwards. First, Marbury got no commission. He won the argument that he was entitled to one and lost the case, because the Court found it had no authority to order the remedy. Second, the statute Marshall struck down was the Judiciary Act of seventeen eighty-nine, taught in entry 1054 as the act that created the Court he sat on. A Federalist chief justice, appointed by a defeated president, limited his own court's original jurisdiction in order to establish a power the Constitution never names. It is the most consequential loss in American legal history. And note what Marshall surrendered in order to win it. He gave up the Court's power to issue such writs directly, a power Congress had granted the Court by statute, in exchange for a power no statute had granted and no Congress could take back. He also declined to order a Republican administration to do anything, which denied Jefferson the chance to defy him. Establishing judicial review while losing the case was the only route by which the doctrine could survive its first use.
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