Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803), is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that established the principle of judicial review, meaning that American courts have the power to strike down laws and statutes they find to violate the Constitution of the United States. Decided in 1803, Marbury is regarded as the single most important decision in American constitutional law. It established that the U.S. Constitution is actually law, not merely a statement of political principles and ideals. It also helped define the boundary between the constitutionally separate executive and judicial branches of the federal government.
The case originated in early 1801 and stemmed from the rivalry between outgoing president John Adams and incoming president Thomas Jefferson. Adams, a member of the Federalist Party, had lost the U.S. presidential election of 1800 to Jefferson, who led the Democratic-Republican Party. In March 1801, just two days before his term as president ended, Adams appointed several dozen Federalist Party supporters to new circuit judge and justice of the peace positions in an attempt to frustrate Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans. The outgoing U.S. Senate quickly confirmed Adams's appointments, but outgoing secretary of state John Marshall was unable to deliver all of the new judges' commissions before Adams's departure and Jefferson's inauguration. Jefferson believed the undelivered commissions were void and instructed his secretary of state, James Madison, not to deliver them. One of the undelivered commissions belonged to William Marbury, a Maryland businessman who had been a strong supporter of Adams and the Federalists. In late 1801, after Madison had repeatedly refused to deliver his commission, Marbury filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court asking the court to issue a writ of mandamus forcing Madison to deliver his commission.
In an opinion written by Marshall who, by then, had been appointed Chief Justice of the United States, the Supreme Court held that Madison's refusal to deliver Marbury's commission was illegal. The court also held that it was normally proper in such situations for a court to order the government official in question to deliver the commission. In Marbury's case, however, the court did not order Madison to comply. Examining the law Congress had passed to define Supreme Court jurisdiction over types of cases like Marbury's—section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789—the court found that the Act had expanded the definition of the Supreme Court's jurisdiction beyond what was originally set forth in the U.S. Constitution. The court then struck down section 13 of the act, announcing that American courts have the power to invalidate laws that they find to violate the Constitution—a power now known as judicial review. Because striking down the law removed any jurisdiction the court might have had over the case, the court could not issue the writ that Marbury had requested.
Background
In the fiercely contested U.S. presidential election of 1800, the three main candidates were Thomas Jefferson, Aaron Burr, and the incumbent president, John Adams. Adams espoused the pro-business and pro-national-government politics of the Federalist Party and its leader, Alexander Hamilton. Jefferson and Burr were leaders of the opposition Democratic-Republican Party, which favored rural agriculture and decentralization. American public opinion had gradually turned against the Federalists in the months leading up to the election. The shift was mainly due to the Federalists' use of the controversial Alien and Sedition Acts, but also due to growing tensions with Great Britain, with whom the Federalists favored close ties. Jefferson easily won the election's popular vote but only narrowly defeated Adams in the Electoral College.
After the results of the election became clear, Adams and the Federalists became determined to exercise their remaining influence before Jefferson took office, and they did everything they could to fill federal offices with "anti-Jeffersonians" who were loyal to the Federalists. On March2, 1801, just two days before his presidential term ended, Adams nominated nearly 60 Federalist supporters to new circuit judge and justice of the peace positions the Federalist-controlled Congress had recently created. These last-minute nomineeswhom Jefferson's supporters derisively called the "Midnight Judges"included William Marbury, a prosperous businessman from Maryland. An ardent Federalist, Marbury was active in Maryland politics and had been a vigorous supporter of the Adams presidency.
The following day, March 3, the Senate approved Adams's nominations en masse. The appointees' commissions were immediately written out on parchment, then signed by Adams and sealed by Secretary of State John Marshall, who had been named the new chief justice of the Supreme Court in January but agreed to continue serving as Secretary of State for the remaining weeks of Adams's presidency. Marshall then dispatched his younger brother James Markham Marshall to deliver the commissions to the appointees. With only one day left before Jefferson's inauguration, James Marshall was able to deliver most of the commissions, but a fewincluding Marbury'swere not delivered.
The day after, March 4, 1801, Jefferson was sworn in and became the third president of the United States. Jefferson instructed his new secretary of state, James Madison, to withhold the undelivered commissions. In Jefferson's opinion, the commissions were void because they had not been delivered before Adams left office. Without their commissions, the appointees were unable to assume their new offices and duties. Over the next several months, Madison steadfastly refused to deliver Marbury's commission to him. Finally, in December 1801, Marbury filed a lawsuit against Madison at the Supreme Court, asking the court to force Madison to deliver his commission. This lawsuit resulted in the case of Marbury v. Madison.
Decision
On February 24, 1803, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous 4–0 decision against Marbury. The court's opinion was written by Chief Justice John Marshall, who structured the court's opinion around a series of three questions it answered in turn: First, did Marbury have a right to his commission? Second, if Marbury had a right to his commission, then was there a legal remedy for him to obtain it? Third, if there was such a remedy, then could the Supreme Court legally issue it?
Marbury's right to his commission The court began by holding that Marbury had a legal right to his commission. Marshall reasoned that all appropriate procedures were followed: the commission had been properly signed and sealed. Madison had argued that the commissions were void if not delivered. The court disagreed, saying that the delivery of the commission was merely a custom, not an essential element of the commission itself.
The court said that because Marbury's commission was valid, Madison's withholding it was "violative of a vested legal right" on Marbury's part.
Marbury's legal remedy Turning to the second question, the court said that the law provided Marbury a remedy for Madison's unlawful withholding of his commission. Marshall wrote that "it is a general and indisputable rule, that where there is a legal right, there is also a legal remedy by suit or action at law, whenever that right is invaded." This rule derives from the ancient Roman legal maxim ("where there is a legal right, there is a legal remedy"), which was well established in the English common law. In what the American legal scholar Akhil Reed Amar called "one of the most important and inspiring passages" of the opinion, Marshall wrote:
The court then confirmed that a writ of mandamusa type of court order that commands a government official to perform an act his official duties legally require him to performwas the proper remedy for Marbury's situation. But this raised the issue of whether the court, which was part of the judicial branch of the government, had the power to command Madison, who as secretary of state was part of the executive branch of the government. The court held that so long as the remedy involved a mandatory duty to a specific person and not a political matter left to discretion, the courts could provide the legal remedy. Borrowing a phrase John Adams had drafted in 1779 for the Massachusetts State Constitution, Marshall wrote: "The government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men.", quoting Marbury, 5 U.S. at 163.
The Supreme Court's jurisdiction
This brought the court to the third question: did the Supreme Court have proper jurisdiction over the case that would allow it to legally issue the writ of mandamus that Marbury wanted? The answer depended entirely on how the court interpreted the Judiciary Act of 1789. Congress had passed the Judiciary Act to establish the American federal court system. Section 13 of the Judiciary Act sets out the Supreme Court's original and appellate jurisdictions.
Marbury had argued that the wording of section 13 had given the Supreme Court the authority to issue writs of mandamus when hearing cases under exclusive (original) jurisdiction, not only under appellate jurisdiction. As Marshall explains in the opinion, gives a court the power to be the first to hear and decide a case; gives a court the power to hear an appeal from a lower court's decision and to "revise and correct" the previous decision. The portion of section 13 that speaks of the court's power to issue writs of mandamus appears after its sentence on appellate jurisdiction, not with the earlier sentences on original jurisdiction, but a semicolon separates it from the clause on appellate jurisdiction. Section 13 does not make clear whether the mandamus clause was intended to be read as part of the appellate clause or on its own—in the opinion, Marshall quoted only the end of the section—and the wording of the law can plausibly be read either way.
In the end, the court agreed with Marbury and interpreted section 13 of the Judiciary Act to have authorized the court to exercise original jurisdiction over cases involving disputes over writs of mandamus. This interpretation, however, meant that the Judiciary Act conflicted with article III of the Constitution. Article III defines the Supreme Court's jurisdiction as follows:
Article III says that the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction only in cases where a U.S. state is a party to a lawsuit or where a lawsuit involves foreign dignitaries. Neither of these categories covered Marbury's lawsuit, which was a dispute over a writ of mandamus for his justice of the peace commission. According to the Constitution, therefore, the court did not have original jurisdiction over a case like Marbury's.
Because the court had interpreted the Judiciary Act to have given it original jurisdiction over lawsuits for writs of mandamus, this meant the Judiciary Act had taken the Constitution's initial scope for the Supreme Court's original jurisdiction, which did not cover cases involving writs of mandamus, and expanded it to include them. The court ruled that Congress cannot increase the Supreme Court's original jurisdiction as it was set down in the Constitution, and it therefore held that the relevant portion of section 13 of the Judiciary Act violated article III of the Constitution.
Judicial review and striking down the law
After ruling that section 13 of the Judiciary Act conflicted with the Constitution, the court struck down that section in its first ever declaration of the power of judicial review. The court ruled that American federal courts have the power to refuse to give any consideration to congressional legislation that is inconsistent with their interpretation of the Constitutiona move colloquially known as "striking down" laws.