Five-minute digest
Marbury v. Madison
Summary
In the final days of his administration in March 1801, President John Adams nominated, and the Senate confirmed, dozens of justices of the peace for the District of Columbia under a new organic act. William Marbury was one of them. His commission was signed by Adams and sealed by Secretary of State John Marshall, but it was never delivered. Thomas Jefferson's new Secretary of State, James Madison, withheld it, and Marbury asked the Court, in its original jurisdiction, for a writ of mandamus ordering Madison to hand it over. Section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 appeared to authorize such writs. Marbury's counsel, Charles Lee, argued that the appointment was complete once the President signed and the seal was affixed; that delivery was a ministerial duty owed to the officer; and that mandamus was the established remedy when an official refused a plain legal duty. Madison made no appearance and offered no argument. The administration's position, stated outside the courtroom, was that an undelivered commission conferred nothing and that courts had no business directing the President's chief officers. The Court decided on 24 February 1803, 4-0, in an opinion by Chief Justice Marshall organized around three questions. Has Marbury a right to the commission? Yes: the appointment was complete, and the five-year office could not be revoked at pleasure. Do the laws afford him a remedy? Yes: where a specific legal duty is owed to an individual, the courts must protect the right, though political and discretionary acts of the executive lie beyond judicial inquiry. Is the remedy a mandamus from this Court? Here the opinion turns. Article III lists the cases of original jurisdiction, and Marshall read Section 13 as adding mandamus to that list. A legislative act contrary to the written Constitution, he reasoned, is void, and judges sworn to support the Constitution must prefer it when the two conflict. The Court therefore lacked jurisdiction and discharged the rule. The library text gives the Opinion of the Court in full; Cranch's summary of counsel's arguments and every footnote are left out. Marbury never received his office. A week after Marbury, in Stuart v. Laird, the Court upheld the Repeal Act of 1802. The Court did not again hold an act of Congress unconstitutional until Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857. In Cooper v. Aaron (1958) the justices cited Marbury for the proposition that the federal judiciary is supreme in the exposition of the Constitution, and the case has remained the standard starting point for the study of judicial review.
Top Lessons
Every right a remedy
Marshall builds the first two-thirds of the opinion on an old common-law maxim, borrowed from Blackstone: where there is a legal right, there is a legal remedy when it is invaded. A government that cannot be made to honour its own legal obligations, he argues, would not deserve to be called a government of laws.
Political discretion and legal duty
The opinion does not claim that courts may review everything the executive does. Marshall separates matters committed to the President's judgment, answerable only politically, from specific duties fixed by statute on which a private person's rights depend. That line has been drawn and redrawn by courts ever since.
The argument from a written constitution
Marshall's case for judicial review rests on a chain of reasoning: the people fixed limits in writing; limits that can be passed at will are no limits; so a contrary statute is void; and judges, who must decide cases, must decide which rule governs. Critics in Jefferson's circle answered that each branch could interpret the Constitution for itself.
Winning by declining power
The Court found that Marbury was wronged yet refused to order Madison to act, so there was no command for the administration to defy. Students of the case have long admired, and some have questioned, the way the opinion asserted a large principle while giving the executive the immediate result it wanted.
Verified Quotes
Frequently cited
“It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is.”
Frequently cited
“The very essence of civil liberty certainly consists in the right of every individual to claim the protection of the laws whenever he receives an injury.”
Frequently cited
“The Government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men.”
“Questions, in their nature political or which are, by the Constitution and laws, submitted to the Executive, can never be made in this court.”
“Between these alternatives there is no middle ground. The Constitution is either a superior, paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, and, like other acts, is alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it.”
“To withhold the commission, therefore, is an act deemed by the Court not warranted by law, but violative of a vested legal right.”
Medical Lens
The opinion concerns a judicial commission, the writ of mandamus and the Court's jurisdiction, and contains no medical material.