Business law principles and applications

¶ … Marbury v. Madison legal case involved a divergence between William Marbury and James Madison on account of how the latter did not act in agreement with former (he finished his term before Madison was appointed Secretary of State) President John Adams' command to deliver several appointments naming Federal circuit judges and Federalist justices. Madison did not act on this command because he was under the power of the newly appointed President, Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson knew that by allowing the appointments to be delivered he would have provided Federalists with the opportunity to exercise control over the federal judiciary.

Jefferson motivated his thinking by emphasizing that the commissions were invalid because they were not delivered by the end of Adams' term. This meant that federal justices would be appointed by a person who was not in the position to make such appointments. Marbury reacted by claiming that he had a right to the commission and that the Supreme Court of the United States needed to act in accordance with a writ of mandamus judicial remedy and force Madison to deliver the commissions. Marbury was right in considering that it was only natural for Jefferson and Madison to acknowledge his position. The grant of commission became effective from the very first moment when it was signed, as its time of delivery had no relevance.

The court accepted Marbury's position and declared Madison's actions as illegal, thus emphasizing that Marbury should have been provided with the commission. However, the court also showed how it was unable to act in agreement with Marbury's desire because his claim was unconstitutional. This case enabled the U.S. As a whole to observe how the Supreme Court had gathered a significant amount of power and how it became able to get actively involved in governing the country.

Stare decisis is Latin for "to stand by things decided" and it promotes the idea that judges have to act in agreement with decisions that have been previously established when they are dealing with a case that has a precedent. This concept is meant to prevent courts from further addressing a topic as long as a decision has already been made concerning the respective topic. Doing otherwise is generally considered as being pointless and ineffective for society as a whole when considering resources being spent and the fact that the final verdict can be wrong.

While most courts are likely to support the stare decisis concept, there have been a series of exceptions when judges considered that previous decisions were erroneous when compared with the cases they were facing.

Res judecata is Latin for "a matter judged" and it states that a case needs to be closed as a result of judges reaching a conclusion and thus it needing no further analysis. In most cases this actually means that a case is closed and there are a limited of isolate cases when judges accept to re-address a res judecata case.