Marbury v. Madison

MARBURY V. MADISON

MARBURY V. MADISON, 1 Cranch (5 U.S.) 137 (1803), the case that established the constitutional doctrine of judicial review in the United States, according to which the federal courts would declare void statutes that conflict with the Constitution.

The concept of judicial review had long existed in the common law. The judicial power to declare void statutes that were contrary to right and reason had been asserted by the English Chief Justice Edward Coke in Dr. Bonham's Case (1610). This doctrine was well known in the American colonies and had been employed in both state and lower federal courts in actions dealing with state statutes. Still, the text of the U.S. Constitution, Article III, which declares the right of the federal courts to hear all cases "arising under this constitution," does not clearly confer this authority.

The dispute leading to Marbury v. Madison arose when William Marbury, Dennis Ramsay, Robert Townsend Hooe, and William Harper were not given their commissions as federal justices of the peace, appointments made by John Adams in the waning days of the Federalist Congress (see Midnight Judges). They sued in the original jurisdiction of the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking a writ of mandamus against James Madison, the new secretary of State, asking the Court to order Madison to deliver their commissions.

In the heated atmosphere of Thomas Jefferson's new presidency, the Court was faced with granting an order that could be ignored or could cause a constitutional crisis between the Anti-Federalist Congress and the Federalist Supreme Court. Not to grant it, however, would be a capitulation.

The responsibility for dealing with this quagmire fell to the new Chief Justice, John Marshall, himself a last-minute Adams appointee. Indeed it was Marshall who, as the former Secretary of State, had left the disputed commissions with his clerk for delivery just before Madison assumed office.

Marshall's opinion framed three questions: Did the plaintiffs have a right to the commission? If so, and if that right had been violated, did the laws afford them a remedy? If they did, was it a mandamus issuing from the Supreme Court?

Marshall found that the commissions having been sealed, the plaintiffs had a right to delivery, and, under the ancient common-law principle that a right denied must have a remedy, the plaintiffs should have a writ of mandamus to deliver the commission. This was allowed under the Judiciary Act of 1789, which authorized the Supreme Court "to issue writs of mandamus, in cases warranted by the principles and usages of law, to any courts appointed, or persons holding office, under the authority of the United States."

Marshall compared this statutory authority to Article III of the U.S. Constitution: "in all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be a party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all other cases …the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction." A case in the Court's original jurisdiction that neither affects the representatives of a foreign state nor has a state of the union as a party is outside the powers conferred on the Court in the Constitution, and the act giving such jurisdiction exceeded Constitutional limits.

Marshall held that the judicial oath of office to defend the Constitution requires that a judge refuse to act according to a law that violates it. He concluded that "a law repugnant to the constitution is void; and that courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument." Thus, he refused to enforce that part of the Judiciary Act, much of the rest of which remains in force.

The case initially provoked outrage from Jefferson and his party, not for the claim to judicial review but for the presumptions that the plaintiffs had been harmed and that the Court might have granted the mandamus. The doctrine of judicial review, expanded to include acts of states and of the federal executive, grew considerably through the twentieth century.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Nelson, William E. "Marbury v. Madison": The Origins and Legacy of Judicial Review. Lawrence: University Press of Kentucky, 2000.

Newmyer, R. Kent. John Marshall and the Heroic Age of the Supreme Court. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001.

Steve Sheppard

See also Judicial Review ; Judiciary Act of 1789 .