Marbury v. Madison, legal case in which, on February 24, 1803, the U.S. Supreme Court first declared an act of Congress unconstitutional, thus establishing the doctrine of judicial review. The court’s opinion, written by Chief Justice John Marshall, is considered one of the foundations of U.S. constitutional law.
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Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that established the principle of judicial review in the United States, meaning that American courts have the power to strike down laws and statutes that they find to violate the Constitution of the United States. Decided in 1803, Marbury remains the single most important decision in American constitutional law.[1] The Court's landmark decision established that the U.S. Constitution is actual law, not just a statement of political principles and ideals, and helped define the boundary between the constitutionally separate executive and judicial branches of the federal government.
The case originated in early 1801 as part of the political and ideological rivalry between outgoing President John Adams and incoming President Thomas Jefferson.[2] Adams had lost the U.S. presidential election of 1800 to Jefferson, and in March 1801, just two days before his term as president ended, Adams appointed several dozen Federalist Party supporters to new circuit judge and justice of the peace positions in an attempt to frustrate Jefferson and his supporters in the Democratic-Republican Party.[3] The U.S. Senate quickly confirmed Adams's appointments, but upon Adams' departure and Jefferson's inauguration a few of the new judges' commissions still had not been delivered.[3] Jefferson believed the undelivered commissions were void, and instructed his new Secretary of State, James Madison, not to deliver them.[4] One of the undelivered commissions belonged to William Marbury, a Maryland businessman who had been a strong supporter of Adams and the Federalists. In late 1801, after Madison had repeatedly refused to deliver his commission, Marbury filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court asking the Court to issue a writ of mandamus forcing Madison to deliver his commission.[5]
In an opinion written by Chief Justice John Marshall, the Court held firstly that Madison's refusal to deliver Marbury's commission was illegal, and secondly that it was normally proper for a court in such situations to order the government official in question to deliver the commission.[6] But in Marbury's case, the Court did not order Madison to comply. Examining the section of the law Congress had passed that gave the Supreme Court jurisdiction over types of cases like Marbury's, Marshall found that it had expanded the definition of the Supreme Court's jurisdiction beyond what was originally set down in the U.S. Constitution.[7] Marshall then struck down that section of the law, announcing that American courts have the power to invalidate laws that they find to violate the Constitution.[8] Because this meant the Court had no jurisdiction over the case, it could not issue the writ that Marbury had requested.
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“All Laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void.” With these words written by Chief Justice Marshall, the Supreme Court for the first time declared unconstitutional a law passed by Congress and signed by the President.
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Background
In the weeks before Thomas Jefferson’s inauguration as president in March 1801, the lame-duck Federalist Congress created 16 new circuit judgeships (in the Judiciary Act of 1801) and an unspecified number of new judgeships (in the Organic Act), which Adams proceeded to fill with Federalists in an effort to preserve his party’s control of the judiciary and to frustrate the legislative agenda of Jefferson and his Republican (Democratic-Republican) Party. Because he was among the last of those appointments (the so-called “midnight appointments”), William Marbury, a Federalist Party leader from Maryland, did not receive his commission before Jefferson became president. Once in office, Jefferson directed his secretary of state, James Madison, to withhold the commission, and Marbury petitioned the Supreme Court to issue a writ of mandamus to compel Madison to act.
Marbury and his lawyer, former attorney general Charles Lee, argued that signing and sealing the commission completed the transaction and that delivery, in any event, constituted a mere formality. But formality or not, without the actual piece of parchment, Marbury could not enter into the duties of office. Despite Jefferson’s hostility, the court agreed to hear the case, Marbury v. Madison, in its February 1803 term.
Some scholars have questioned whether Marshall should have removed himself from the case because of his prior service as Adams’s secretary of state (1800–01). Certainly, later judicial standards would have called for recusal, but at the time only financial connections to a case led judges to step aside, as Marshall did in suits regarding Virginia lands in which he had an interest. The Republicans, always quick to criticize Marshall, did not even raise the issue of the propriety of his sitting in the case.
The issue directly presented by Marbury v. Madison can only be described as minor. By the time the court heard the case, the wisdom of Jefferson’s desire to reduce the number of justices of the peace had been confirmed (and the Judiciary Act of 1801 had been repealed); Marbury’s original term was almost half over; and most people, Federalists and Republicans alike, considered the case to be moot. But Marshall, despite the political difficulties involved, recognized that he had a perfect case with which to expound a basic principle, judicial review, which would secure the Supreme Court’s primary role in constitutional interpretation.
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The decision
The chief justice recognized the dilemma that the case posed to the court. If the court issued the writ of mandamus, Jefferson could simply ignore it, because the court had no power to enforce it. If, on the other hand, the court refused to issue the writ, it would appear that the judicial branch of government had backed down before the executive, and that Marshall would not allow. The solution he chose has properly been termed a tour de force. In one stroke, Marshall managed to establish the power of the court as the ultimate arbiter of the Constitution, to chastise the Jefferson administration for its failure to obey the law, and to avoid having the court’s authority challenged by the administration.
Marshall, adopting a style that would mark all his major opinions, reduced the case to a few basic issues. He asked three questions: (1) Did Marbury have the right to the commission? (2) If he did, and his right had been violated, did the law provide him with a remedy? (3) If it did, would the proper remedy be a writ of mandamus from the Supreme Court? The last question, the crucial one, dealt with the jurisdiction of the court, and in normal circumstances it would have been answered first, since a negative response would have obviated the need to decide the other issues. But that would have denied Marshall the opportunity to criticize Jefferson for what the chief justice saw as the president’s flouting of the law.
Following the arguments of Marbury’s counsel on the first two questions, Marshall held that the validity of a commission existed once a president signed it and transmitted it to the secretary of state to affix the seal. Presidential discretion ended there, for the political decision had been made, and the secretary of state had only a ministerial task to perform—delivering the commission. In that the law bound him, like anyone else, to obey. Marshall drew a careful and lengthy distinction between the political acts of the president and the secretary, in which the courts had no business interfering, and the simple administrative execution that, governed by law, the judiciary could review.
Having decided that Marbury had the right to the commission, Marshall next turned to the question of remedy, and once again found in the plaintiff’s favour, holding that “having this legal title to the office, [Marbury] has a consequent right to the commission, a refusal to deliver which is a plain violation of that right, for which the laws of his country afford him a remedy.” After castigating Jefferson and Madison for “sport[ing] away the vested rights of others,” Marshall addressed the crucial third question. Although he could have held that the proper remedy was a writ of mandamus from the Supreme Court—because the law that had granted the court the power of mandamus in original (rather than appellate) jurisdiction, the Judiciary Act of 1789, was still in effect—he instead declared that the court had no power to issue such a writ, because the relevant provision of the act was unconstitutional. Section 13 of the act, he argued, was inconsistent with Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution, which states in part that “the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction” in “all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party,” and that “in all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction.” In thus surrendering the power derived from the 1789 statute (and giving Jefferson a technical victory in the case), Marshall gained for the court a far-more-significant power, that of judicial review.
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Impact
Marshall’s masterful verdict has been widely hailed. In the face of attacks on the judiciary launched by Jefferson and his followers, Marshall needed to make a strong statement to maintain the status of the Supreme Court as the head of a coequal branch of government. By asserting the power to declare acts of Congress unconstitutional (which the court would not exercise again for more than half a century), Marshall claimed for the court a paramount position as interpreter of the Constitution.
Although Marbury v. Madison set an abiding precedent for the court’s power in that area, it did not end debate over the court’s purview, which has continued for more than two centuries. In fact, it is likely that the issue will never be fully resolved. But the fact remains that the court has claimed and exercised the power of judicial review through most of U.S. history—and, as Judge Learned Hand noted more than a century later, the country is used to it by now. Moreover, the principle fits well with the government’s commitment to checks and balances. Few jurists can argue with Marshall’s statement of principle near the end of his opinion, “that a law repugnant to the constitution is void, and that courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument.”
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Closing
Outgoing President John Adams had issued William Marbury a commission as justice of the peace, but the new Secretary of State, James Madison, refused to deliver it. Marbury then sued to obtain it. With his decision in Marbury v. Madison, Chief Justice John Marshall established the principle of judicial review, an important addition to the system of “checks and balances” created to prevent any one branch of the Federal Government from becoming too powerful. The document shown here bears the marks of the Capitol fire of 1898.
When James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay wrote a defense of the Constitution in The Federalist, they explained their judgment that a strong national government must have built-in restraints: “You must first enable government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” The writers of the Constitution had given the executive and legislative branches powers that would limit each other as well as the judiciary branch. The Constitution gave Congress the power to impeach and remove officials, including judges or the President himself. The President was given the veto power to restrain Congress and the authority to appoint members of the Supreme Court with the advice and consent of the Senate. In this intricate system, the role of the Supreme Court had not been defined. It therefore fell to a strong Chief Justice like Marshall to complete the triangular structure of checks and balances by establishing the principle of judicial review. Although no other law was declared unconstitutional until the Dred Scott decision of 1857, the role of the Supreme Court to invalidate Federal and state laws that are contrary to the Constitution has never been seriously challenged.
“The Constitution of the United States,” said Woodrow Wilson, “was not made to fit us like a strait jacket. In its elasticity lies its chief greatness.” The often-praised wisdom of the authors of the Constitution consisted largely of their restraint. They resisted the temptation to write too many specifics into the basic document. They contented themselves with establishing a framework of government that included safeguards against the abuse of power. When the Marshall decision Marbury v. Madison completed the system of checks and balances, the United States had a government in which laws could be enacted, interpreted and executed to meet challenging circumstances.