The Origins of Judicial Review Essays - , Term Papers

The Origins of Judicial Review In 1717, Bishop Hoadly told King George I, "Whoever hath an absolute authority to interpret written or spoken laws; it is he who is truly the lawgiver to all intents and purposes and not the person who wrote or spoke them (Pollack, 153)." Early sentiments similar these have blossomed into a large scale debate over which branch of our government has the power to overturn laws that do not follow the foundations of our democratic system; the constitution. In this paper I will discuss the history of judicial review in respect to the U.S. Supreme Court, but more importantly, I will discuss the impact that judicial review has had on the Supreme Court and our system of government and the various arguments behind this power that the Supreme Court now possesses. The first instance that the Supreme Court showed its power under the cloak of judicial review was in the legendary case of Marbury v. Madison. In the confusion of leaving office, President John Adams failed to have delivered four commissions that he had made before having to surrender his power to Thomas Jefferson. In fact, the responsibility of delivering the commissions was left in the hands of John Marshall, the former Secretary of State under Adams, who was now the chief justice of the Supreme Court. When Jefferson took office, he refused to have the commissions delivered, and the case was filed by Marbury and the three other marshals that failed to receive their commissions. As the Chief Justice, Marshall wrote the opinion of the court by answering three questions concerning the case; did Marbury have a right to the commission, did Marbury have a remedy to receive the commission, and was a writ of mandamus the proper remedy to receive the commission. Marshall answered yes to the first two questions, but said that the Supreme Court could not give him the commission he was entitled to through a writ of mandamus. Through this decision, Marshall not only asserted the power of the court with judicial review, but also avoided a potentially devastating confrontation with the presidency in the early years of our fledgling government. Marshall was able to establish the judiciary's role in our government with this decision by answering the question that if the courts do not have this power, which does. The significance of the Marbury v. Madison decision is far reaching. Before the 1803 decision, the court had never really been a factor in our government, so much that the 1802 session was terminated by President Jefferson. The case established the Supreme Court's authority to review and strike down governmental actions that did not follow the Constitution. Marshall believed that although the framers of the Constitution did not explicitly write the power of judicial review into the constitution, it was what the framers intended. I will discuss this argument in greater detail later. After the Marbury v. Madison decision, the Marshall court enjoyed a new found power, but rarely found occasion to use it since most of the cases that were heard were rather trivial private law disputes. However, the court was able to hand down a number of important opinions interpreting various aspects of the Constitution. After Marshall's death in 1835, Roger B. Taney ascended to the chief justice. Taney, unlike Marshall, was a Jacksonian Democrat, and a strong supporter of President Jackson and his view of state's rights. It was Taney who passed down the infamous 1857 decision in Dredd Scott v. Sandford, which displayed the court's belief that blacks had no real Constitutional status and that the court strongly supported state's rights. Furthermore, the Dredd Scott decision worsened conditions for nationalists, and inevitably pushed our nation closer to civil war. After the war had ended, the court again found itself busy with a large caseload due to the many commercial and private disputes raised by the war. Chief justices Salmon Chase and Morrison Waite helped to reestablish congressional power over the defeated South, but had little chance to use its power of judicial review during this time or repair. The close of the war brought the Industrial Revolution and newfound problems to our country and government. Two questions which