Marbury v. Madison

In Marbury v. Madison (1803), the Supreme Court announced for the first time the principle that a court may declare an act of Congress void if it is inconsistent with the Constitution.

Thomas Jefferson, a member of the Republican Party, won the election of 1800. The outgoing president, John Adams, proceeded to rapidly appoint fifty-eight members of his own party to fill government posts created by Congress.

It was the responsibility of the outgoing Secretary of State, John Marshall, to finish the paperwork and give it to each of the newly appointed judges. Although Marshall signed and sealed all of the commissions, he failed to deliver seventeen of them to the respective appointees. Marshall assumed that his successor would finish the job, but when Jefferson became president, he told his new secretary of state, James Madison, not to deliver some of the commissions because he did not want members of the opposing political party to take office. Those individuals couldn’t take office until they actually had their commissions in hand.

William Marbury, whom Adams had appointed as justice of the peace of the District of Columbia, was one of these last-minute appointees who did not receive his commission. Marbury sued James Madison and asked the Supreme Court of the United States to issue a writ of mandamus, a court order that requires an official to perform or refrain from performing a certain duty. In this case, the writ would have ordered Madison to deliver the commission. Marbury argued that he was entitled to his commission and that the Judiciary Act of 1789 gave the Supreme Court of the United States original jurisdiction to issue a writ of mandamus. Madison disagreed. When the case came before the Court, John Marshall— the person who had failed to deliver the commission in the first place— was the new chief justice.

Chief Justice John Marshall, writing for a unanimous Court, denied the petition and refused to issue the writ. Although he found that the petitioners were entitled to their commissions, he held that the Constitution did not give the Supreme Court the power to issue writs of mandamus. Section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 provided that such writs might be issued, but, Marshall said, that section of the act was inconsistent with the Constitution and therefore invalid.

Although the immediate effect of the decision was to deny power to the Court (because the decision stated that the Court could not issue writs of mandamus), its long-run effect has been to increase the Court’s power by establishing the rule that “it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” Since Marbury v. Madison, the Supreme Court has had the final word on the constitutionality of congressional legislation.

http://historychannel.com/cgi-bin/frameit.cgi?p=http%3A//historychannel.com/perl/search.pl%3Fword%3Djohn+marshall

http://www.landmarkcases.org/marbury/background3.html