Judicial Review and Marbury v. Madison

William Marbury was promised a judgeship by outgoing President John Adams, but the new administration refused to deliver his commission. Marbury sued, asking the Supreme Court to force delivery. Chief Justice John Marshall answered three questions in order: Does Marbury have a right to the commission? Yes. Does the law give him a remedy? Yes. But can the Supreme Court be the one to order it? Here Marshall said no, because the Judiciary Act of 1789 had given the Court a power, issuing this kind of order as a first filing, that Article III of the Constitution never granted it. A law passed by Congress cannot expand the Constitution's own limits on the Court.

That last move is the whole trick. To deny Marbury his job, Marshall had to declare part of the Judiciary Act of 1789 unconstitutional and therefore void. In doing that, he established that the Supreme Court gets to decide when a law conflicts with the Constitution, and that the Constitution wins. Nothing in the Constitution's text says courts may strike down laws. Marshall built the power from Article III's description of judicial power and from the logic that a written Constitution means nothing if ordinary laws can override it.

Judicial review is the hinge for every later case in this unit. Once one court can void an act of Congress, every future dispute between branches, a presidential action, a state law, a bureaucratic rule, can be measured against the Constitution by judges. It gives the judiciary a permanent check on the other branches, feeding directly into later cases that rely on this same reasoning.