00:00A lot of people have heard of Marbury v. Madison.
00:04You may remember hearing about it in school and that it was important.
00:08But what exactly was it?
00:11Why did this Supreme Court case become so influential?
00:15How did it reshape the balance of power in the United States?
00:19And why is it still a source of controversy today?
00:24Why Marbury v. Madison matters, the court case that shaped America.
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00:52The first major test of the new Constitution
00:55was the 1800 presidential election between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
01:01When Washington stepped down after serving only two terms four years earlier,
01:06Adams, then the vice president, won.
01:09Since Washington was leaving office voluntarily,
01:12there was no issue with the transfer of power.
01:15The election of 1800 posed a different concern.
01:20Adams and Jefferson ran again.
01:22Adams as part of the new Federalist Party
01:25and Jefferson, a Republican,
01:28what we now call the Democratic-Republican Party,
01:31to distinguish it from the current Republican Party.
01:35They were bitter opponents.
01:37Unlike the previous election, Jefferson won this time.
01:41However, in one of the more difficult elections in U.S. history,
01:46he tied with Aaron Burr.
01:48The election was thrown into the House, which eventually picked Jefferson.
01:54While British parliaments had been changing hands for well over a century,
01:58this was something new.
02:00The peaceful transfer of power for a head of state.
02:05Not only would the head of state be replaced,
02:08but would be replaced by a bitter political opponent.
02:13That this transfer followed a messy election is even more astounding.
02:19But Adams stepped down, and Jefferson became president.
02:24The constitutional system was tested, and it worked.
02:28Still, that the power was peacefully transferred
02:32did not mean it was happily transferred.
02:35The outgoing Federalist Party tried to hamper the incoming Democratic-Republicans.
02:41One outcome of this was William Marbury, and others,
02:45nominated and confirmed as Justices of the Peace in the District of Columbia,
02:50never received their actual commissions.
02:53They sued in the Supreme Court,
02:56asking the court to order Secretary of State James Madison
02:59to deliver the commissions.
03:02This type of order is called a writ of mandamus.
03:06And Congress had specifically given the court this power
03:09in the Judiciary Act of 1789.
03:13The court ruled that the commission's delivery was merely a formality,
03:17and that its absence did not invalidate the appointment.
03:21The court also ruled that Marbury was entitled to a legal remedy.
03:26That is, the court should order their commissions to be delivered.
03:31These would indicate the ruling in Marbury's favor.
03:35All that was left was to issue the writ of mandamus.
03:39Still, despite all this, the court said they could not issue the writ,
03:44and so Marbury never got his commission.
03:47This is not what puts Marbury v. Madison in the textbooks.
03:51It is the court's reasoning behind their decision.
03:55In considering whether the court could grant the writ,
03:59Chief Justice Marshall wrote,
04:22The distinction between a government with limited and unlimited powers is abolished.
04:27If those limits do not confine the persons on whom they are imposed,
04:32and if acts prohibited and acts allowed are of equal obligation.
04:37It is a proposition too plain to be contested
04:40that the Constitution controls any legislative act repugnant to it,
04:44or that the legislature may alter the Constitution by an ordinary act.
04:49Between these alternatives, there is no middle ground.
04:52The Constitution is either a superior, paramount law,
04:56unchangeable by ordinary means,
04:58or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts,
05:01and like other acts,
05:03is alterable when the legislature shall please to alter.
05:07The Constitution lists the cases the Supreme Court hears.
05:11Basically, appeals,
05:13along with cases involving two or more states,
05:17ambassadors, and such.
05:19Marbury's case was not an appeal,
05:22and it was not one of the types listed.
05:24Still, the Judiciary Act of 1789
05:28gave the Supreme Court the power to hear cases.
05:32Yet, the court held the act invalid.
05:35The Congress could not give the Supreme Court powers
05:39not given by the Constitution.
05:42As Marshall wrote,
05:56Some critics of the ruling thought Marshall should have stopped there.
06:01Yet, he went on to write,
06:04It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department
06:07to say what the law is.
06:10Those who apply the rule to particular cases
06:12must of necessity expound and interpret that rule.
06:16If two laws conflict with each other,
06:18the courts must decide on the operation of each.
06:22In his ruling,
06:24some falsely believe that Marshall created the concept of judicial review.
06:29That is, the ability to rule a law unconstitutional.
06:34Yet, Hamilton argued for that role in Federalist No. 78.
06:38The complete independence of the courts of justice
06:41is peculiarly essential in a limited Constitution.
06:45By a limited Constitution,
06:47I understand one which contains certain specified exceptions
06:50to the legislative authority.
06:52Such, for instance,
06:54as that it shall pass no bills of attainder,
06:57no ex post facto laws, and the like.
07:00Limitations of this kind
07:01can be preserved in practice no other way
07:04than through the medium of courts of justice,
07:06whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary
07:09to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void.
07:12Marshall's opinion did not create the concept of judicial review.
07:16It only made it explicit
07:19and a duty of the judicial department.
07:23Still, since the Constitution does not explicitly give the Supreme Court this role,
07:30it comes from the ruling in Marbury.
07:33It is a soft power,
07:35a power based on convention and tradition.
07:38As such, they exist unless pushed too far.
07:42The courts can claim this,
07:44but the Constitution does not say
07:47the Congress or the executive branch has to agree.
07:51Thus, it is probably no surprise that early on,
07:55the court was reluctant to push this power too much.
07:58In fact,
07:59the court did not rule another law unconstitutional
08:03for another 54 years.
08:06That, unfortunately,
08:08was the infamous Dred Scott decision.
08:10From 1864 to the end of the century,
08:14another 20 laws would be declared unconstitutional.
08:18The numbers remained low until the 1930s
08:21and FDR's New Deal,
08:24but have significantly increased since the 1960s.
08:29Marbury also highlights an important distinction
08:33often overlooked in the coverage of the courts today.
08:36There is a difference between the ruling
08:39and the reasoning,
08:41between what they ruled
08:43and why they ruled.
08:46For the participants in a lawsuit,
08:49the what is clearly the most important.
08:51Did they win or lose?
08:53But for the Constitution and the country,
08:57the why is far more important.
09:00Nowhere is this clearer
09:01than in Marbury v. Madison.
09:06So what do you think?
09:07Did Marbury v. Madison strengthen the Constitution
09:10by establishing judicial review?
09:13Or did it give the Supreme Court
09:15too much unchecked authority?
09:18And when the court interprets the Constitution today,
09:22should its reasoning matter more
09:24than the actual ruling itself?
09:26Share your perspective in the comments below.
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09:39exploring the wilderness of ideas.
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