Marbury v Madison Impact

In 1803, Marbury v. Madison made the US Constitution as the supreme law, affirming the authority of the Court over judicial review. The U.S. Supreme Court concluded that the federal courts are allowed to overturn the decisions of the other arms of government in the event that they act contrary to the Constitution (GROSSMAN). This is one of those "checks and balances" that are the core of the national government's function.

In 1800, Thomas Jefferson, a Democratic-Republican, beat John Adams, a Federalist in becoming America's third president. Right before Adam's retirement, he introduced new positions in the judiciary, which he gave to his political partners. After Jefferson became president, James Madison, the State Secretary, refused to submit the commissions responsible for allowing judges to go back to work. Some of those who had been appointed, in inclusion of William Marbury, took petitions to the Supreme Court. They asked for Madison to be forced into delivering those documents. John Marshall, the Chief Justice, wrote on behalf of the court that they had unanimously ruled that in spite Madison was acting against the law. However, the court had no power to force him to deliver those documents. The ruling also stated that part of the 1789 Judiciary Act was unconstitutional, as it gave the court the authority to give a writ of mandamus order (GROSSMAN; Bamzai, 1058). More than half a century will go by before the United States Supreme Court exercises its authority to make a judicial review in the case of Dred Scott again.

The opinion, facts and circumstances in the Marbury case can be summarized briefly. Following Thomas Jefferson election as the very first President from the Republican Party in 1800, there were new judgeships created by the lame-duck Congress of Federalist. They were meant to be given to Federalists first, before handing over power to people of the Republican Party. The burden of business brought about by the change in presidential regimes hindered William Marbury from being handed the commission as a peace justice in Columbia District. After the Republicans refused to hand the commission, Marbury, acting with respect to the 1798 Judiciary Act (Section 13), made a writ of mandamus suit, forcing the Republicans to deliver, an original act in a Supreme Court case (Bamzai, 1059). The Chief Justice wrote the Court's unanimous opinion. The Court ruled that Marbury had been deprived of his lawful right to hold the office. Additionally, it was good to sue for the writ of mandamus. However, according to Section 13, the U.S. Congress had enlarged the jurisdiction of the Court unconstitutionally by improperly giving it the authority to give writs of mandamus. For this reason, Marbury was denied his writ application. In order for this decision to be made, the Chief Justice made a judicial review argument (which is still famous today), although then, the practice had a different name. In short, this argument stated that it was legitimate for the Court's authority to deny the enforcement of a statutory law contradicting the Constitution. This was with regard to the foundation of the Constitution in popular authority, which gave it supreme authority over ordinary statutes. Additionally, the Constitution, which was in writing, created three government branches, which were co-equal. The authority of each branch was restricted by enumeration (Tuomala, 315). Consequently, when there was a conflict between a statute and the Constitution, and the case had been presented to the Supreme Court, it was required that the Court chose the Constitution over the statute for the case to be resolved.

The precedent in the Marbury case had minor impact until the second half of the 1800s. Then, for several reasons, it was for the first time seen as a major stroke in politics, which had given the Supreme Court the last word with regard to interpreting the Constitution. Marshall's seminal biography by Albert J. Beveridge gave a clear description of the modern day orthodox view. Beveridge asserted that Marshall manipulated Marbury in asserting that within the Judiciary was the exclusive authority to state that a statute was unconstitutional, as well as announce that it was the Supreme Court that had the last word on what was constitutional (Beveridge, 32). This opinion was enthusiastically elaborated by Progressives in the early 1900s, such as Vernon L. Parrington, the historian who stated in his writings that Chief Justice Marshall, in Marbury, made a huge move to state that the Constitution was under the Court's sovereignty (O'Neill, 793). The notion that the Marbury case was a disguised political move which authorized that the legislature and executive had no authority as the final decision-makers regarding their constitutional authority was the textbook orthodoxy for more than half of the 1900s, and its illustrations were impossible to multiply. This notion was reinforced by Cooper v Aaron (1958), the case of Little Rock, Arkansas, where it was rued that Brown v Board of Education (1954) unification order amid resistance by the state. Cooper cited the Marbury case as authority for the basic doctrine stating that the federal Court has higher authority in interpreting Constitutional law, and hence that its Fourteenth Amendment exposition in Brown stood as the supreme federal law (O'Neill, 793). The Court recently restated this perspective of its authority.

After the Second World War, the U.S. judicial review enhanced the modern day judicial supremacy as well as the ad hoc harmonization of rival policy claims. The claims had also started in the second half of the 1800s and further developed during the 1930's New Deal jurisprudence. During the 1960s and 70s, the authority of the Supreme Court under the two Chief Justices, Warren Burger and Earl Warren, became more clear, contentious and had more global influence. Be the time it was the 1980s, the Court's extent of reach and the Constitution's bicentennial led to re-examination of the Marbury case as well as the judicial review history.

Almost every American trusts both concepts; that it is the people who create the law, and that the law in a way surpasses ordinary human will, incorporating definitive doctrines of what is right. The case of Marbury v. Madison gave some distinctions which helped Americans keep the two concepts as the basis of their knowledge of the constitution (Nelson, 240). In today's American courts, judges hand juries instructions or charges regarding the law. If the jurors do not follow the instructions given, their verdict, in exclusion of that of exonerating a defendant with criminal charges, will be reserved.

This resort to a Court review will probably be seen by most listeners as a more political move than it would be to allow the writ of mandamus to Marbury. Nonetheless, John Marshall had a different understanding of judicial review from that which we have today. For him and his Supreme Court colleagues, a judicial review would neither allow nor require judges to execute discretion. Marshall, in his opinion, never invoked natural rights. He did not even use any precedent or any other judicial authority from the past (Nelson, 248). He, in fact, only cited a single case in the whole opinion. In summary, John Marshall did not once rely on doctrines that were either created by or needed to be interpreted by judges.

Conversely, the doctrines that he thought were important got their power from the people's "original right" to create, for their forthcoming government, such doctrines as, in their view, shall be most conducive to their happiness (Nelson, 251). Marshall and the rest of the judiciary viewed judicial review as that which merely needed to be compared with fundamental doctrines added by citizens to the Constitution in writing. In Marbury, the doctrines deliberated original Supreme Court jurisdiction in special kinds of cases. They declared appellate jurisdiction in the rest of the cases, with written statute, which allowed the Court to have original jurisdiction on a group outside the specification of the Constitution.

Since the Marbury case, it has been the court with the last decision in determining whether or not a congressional legislation is constitutional. Additionally, the ruling was fundamental to singling out the Supreme Court as an independent Government branch, with equal power to the Executive and Congressional Branches. This case is to-date seen as among the most significant cases in American history. Its impact is still felt today. In the modern world, the Court exercised its authority to allow states to use a drug associated with failed executions in death sentences. On the 29th of June, 2015, a 5-4 ruling was made (Bamzai, 1070-1). The ruling held that drugs are not a violation of the freedom against unusual and cruel punishment given in the Eighth Amendment.

In a recent event, the U.S. Supreme Court exercised its authority to proclaim that according to the Constitution, the people of the nation have the freedom of same-sex marriage. This was a 5-4 ruling which was made in 2015, June 26. According to Justice Anthony Kennedy, same-sex couples have respect for marriage and would like to be given equal respect by the law (Haworth, 298). Hence, that freedom is given in Constitutional law. The Marbury case has given the United States of America the chance to grow on a strong basis of balance among the three branches. The U.S. currently has a structure that gives the branches the power to interact and have equal authority to make sure the decisions made are legal and fair in accordance with the Constitution, not just in favour of specific people.

Finally, and probably most importantly is the matter regarding compatibility of the court review with doctrines of democracy. It has been sagely observed by researchers that there exists inevitable tension between popular sovereignty and rule of law. Currently, the consequences of that impasse are discussed in the structure of Alexander Bickel's argument about the "counter majoritarian difficulty" posed by judicial review (GROSSMAN). Bickel asserted that due to the tension, judges that are non-elected have to show great resistance in reversing laws that the citizens' representatives pass. They are obliged to make decisions based on principle, and to interfere with political matters only when it is absolutely necessary. This is when it is clear that a mistake has been made. However, Bickel's critics state that the country's system cannot be described as purely majoritarian. The system is constitutional and democratic and is committed to the rights of individuals, and limits the majority rule. This debate cannot be resolved, but neither can it be ignored.