Marbury v. Madison (1803)

In the last days of his presidency in 1801, John Adams appointed dozens of Federalist judges and justices of the peace, the so-called midnight judges. William Marbury was named a justice of the peace for the District of Columbia, but his signed commission was not delivered before Thomas Jefferson took office, and Jefferson's Secretary of State, James Madison, refused to deliver it. Marbury asked the Supreme Court directly for a writ of mandamus ordering Madison to hand it over.

Chief Justice John Marshall, writing for a unanimous Court on February 24, 1803, held that Marbury had a right to his commission and that the law provided a remedy, but that the Court could not grant it. Section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789, which Marbury relied on to bring his case directly to the Supreme Court, added to the Court's original jurisdiction beyond what Article III allowed. Because the Constitution is superior law, Marshall reasoned, a statute in conflict with it is void, and it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.

The decision was politically shrewd: by denying Marbury relief, Marshall avoided a confrontation with Jefferson that the Court might have lost, while claiming a far greater power. The Court did not strike down another federal law until Dred Scott in 1857. Today judicial review is the foundation of the judiciary's role, invoked whenever a court strikes down a law or executive action as unconstitutional.