in this lecture we're going to cover the very important very significant marbury verse madison supreme court decision of 1803. now what you see on the screen here is a very famous uh excerpt from the supreme court decision in 1803 uh the in the foreground distorted is a monument to somebody very important in not only american history but vital to this case so by the end of this hopefully you'll get a sense of who that is and uh why they are so important to american history so let's just jump right into this court case this court case is so important to understanding the emergence of the judicial branch as an equal branch to the other two that we really do need to do our due diligence here and understand everything involved with this case so we're gonna create a really good foundation on which to build upon uh up to this case in 1803 so let's start by talking briefly about the united states constitution and the supreme court of the united states article 3 of the u.s constitution is the article of the constitution that creates the judicial branch article 1 creates the congress article 2 creates the executive branch and article 3 creates the judicial branch in section 2 of article 3 it states that you see there in yellow that the judicial power of this country shall extend to all cases in the united states in law and equity that arise under the constitution or any of the laws of the united states or treaties now what this means is that the framers of the constitution the founders of the constitution clearly intended for the supreme court of the united states or the judicial branch itself to be the arbiter of the constitution to be the entity that interprets the constitution and that rules on federal laws whether or not federal laws passed by congress are constitutional or not it's clear by section 2 that this is what the framers and the founders intended the problem with this is that the us constitution was ratified and went into effect in 1788 and we are now well into the early part of the 19th century and up to this point the judicial branch had never exercised this power even though it's implied that it has this power and the fact that the judicial branch had never exercised this power it gave rise then to the idea that maybe the judicial branch shouldn't exercise this power or if the at the very least if it's not going to exercise its power then who's going to exercise the power and this is what guys to the ideas of thomas jefferson and james madison in 1798 when they wrote the kentucky and the virginia resolutions now jefferson pinned the kentucky resolution in 1798 in reaction and in opposition to the federalist legislation known as the alien and sedition acts and we mentioned in previous lectures that the reason he wrote this uh as as well as madison was they did not believe that a federalist controlled judiciary as it was in 1798 meaning all the judges on all the courts and in all of the supreme court were all appointed by federalist presidents they didn't think that if they took an argument against the alien and sedition acts as being unconstitutional to the federal courts that they would get a fair hearing but on top of that the the judicial branch had not actually exercised its power of interpreting federal laws and so jefferson and madison concluded that somebody's got to do this because you have the federal government clearly trampling freedom of speech and freedom of the press with the alien and sedition acts and so that's why in the kentucky resolution you had thomas jefferson making the case that if the judicial branch isn't going to do this or if the judicial branch is tainted and it's biased because it's filled with federalist then it's up to the states to uh to assume undelegated powers right it's up to the states then to judge for themselves whether or not a law has crossed some constitutional barrier whether or not a law is constitutional or not and so you can see this portion of the kentucky resolution that jefferson wrote in 1798 james madison who wrote the virginia resolution uh echoed the same idea in his argument in which he said that the states who were parties there too have the right and are on duty bound to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil now the evil he's talking about there the alien it's edition acts but they're making a larger case their their argument here is that if the federal judiciary is not going to strike down clearly unconstitutional laws then somebody has to do it and in jefferson and madison's minds it clearly then has to be the states now these ideas then right that the states possess the right to judge whether or not federal laws are constitutional and have them the ability to strike them down or nullify them if uh if these laws or actions are determined to be unconstitutional these are known as the principles of 98 it's also known as the compact theory the idea that the constitution and the government was created by the states forming a compact and thus the states gave up power to the government and thus have the right to judge whether or not the government abuses that power now this was all laid out very clearly in a previous lecture but it's important to understand for the background of this case of marbury versus madison so what do we have here we have a u.s constitution that clearly clearly grants the judicial branch the power to interpret the constitution as well as interpret federal laws but we hadn't yet seen it happen and so it gave rise then to these principles of 98 by jefferson and madison arguing that somebody's got to do this and so maybe perhaps the states should do so okay now let's uh so there's a little bit of ingredient into this case it'll all become clear i promise towards the end now the next item is a federal law passed in 1789 known as the judiciary act of 1789. the judiciary act of 1799 is a very important law not only in this case but also just in american history here's why so here's article three again of the us constitution we already looked at section two of this article at the very beginning of this lecture but this is section one and i want you to get a sense of what the framers and founders intended here section one of the article of article three states that the judicial power of the united states shall be vested in one supreme court now just stop right there and think what that's saying then is that the us constitution is only going to create one court the supreme court you go on and it says and in such inferior courts as the congress may from time to time ordain and establish so what the constitution does when it comes to the judicial branch is it only creates a supreme court in the united states and it then uh uh empowers the u.s congress to create inferior courts if the us congress wants to uh so why why would you do this well the framers and founders did not know how many courts we would need they couldn't you can't see into the future and so it essentially then allowed the congress over the over time to decide how many inferior courts are needed in the country so when the first u.s congress gets together in 1788 and after they've counted up all the electoral votes they need to get it get on with the business of fleshing out the judicial system in this country because the supreme court can't hear every single case that arises under the constitution or that arises from the laws of the united states so we were going to need some inferior courts what we were going to need is a full-fledged national court system and that's what the judiciary act the 1789 did now the system it created in 1789 is still in place today but it is way more complicated than i'm about to describe so let's just simplify it the judicial act of 17 the judiciary act of 1789 created a three-tiered court system and at the bottom tier were federal district courts that would be established in every single state of the country and these are inferior courts where if you or a state has an argument against something the federal government's doing or a law that is passed by the u.s congress this is where you would take your case to begin with and it will be handled at the federal district court level your case can be appealed from the federal district courts to the second tier of the court system which were known as the circuit courts and this is where appeals would be handled coming from the federal district courts and then out of all the appeals that are handled in the set in the circuit courts some of them or they can all be appealed to the supreme court of the united states although the supreme court will only have time to address a few of them and so this is the national court system that's going to be created under the judiciary act of 1789. now why does this fit into this case now this is a very important but it's very detail-oriented in the judiciary act of 1789 the united states congress gave a power to the supreme court of the united states known as the power of mandamus that's a latin word that loosely translates to to to force somebody to do something right so what the judiciary act did in 1789 is not only create a three-tiered national court system but it authorized the supreme court of the united states with a power to force people that hold government offices uh to do something right and the way a court order somebody to do something is they issue a writ rid of mandemus then is a command by a superior court to a public official could be in the legislative branch it could be a congress person it could be a senator but it could also extend to the president of the united states now why does this matter well i don't want to give it away yet but this does matter this power of mandamus given to the supreme court of the united states by a federal law in 1789 is absolutely critical for understanding this case so if you've written this down that the 1789 judiciary act had created a three-tier national court system also make a lot of stars and and reference you know draw a lot of attention to this power of mandamus that's also given to the supreme court in the 1789 judiciary act okay so we now have a really great foundation we've talked a lot about the constitution and supreme court and the power that the framers intended for the con for the supreme court we've also talked about these alternative views jefferson and madison the principles of 98 and then we've even talked about this federal law the 1789 judiciary act and the national court system that it created and the power of mandamus that it gives to the supreme court of the united states now let's jump into the story of this actual case the story of this case begins like a lot of cases in american history years before it happens and in this case starts with the election or elections of 1800 in the year 1800 the united states was having a presidential election we've already talked about that presidential election that was the one that resulted in thomas jefferson's uh victory becoming the third president in american history so what happened in 1800 as a result of the presidential election is that the federalists who used to control the executive branch had now lost control of that branch to the democratic republicans but what about the legislative branch well also in 1800 we were having congressional elections and what that means is that every two years in this country we re-elect the entire house of representatives and we re-elect a third of the u.s senate because senators serve every six years so this happens every two years and every four years we have a presidential election in 1800 we not only have been a presidential election but we were re-electing all of the house of representatives as well as a third of the u.s senate and what happened in the house of representatives is that control of the house flipped from federalists over to the democratic republicans in 1800 you needed 54 seats in the house of representatives to have a majority and the democrat or the democratic republicans got it they ended up controlling 68 of the total seats now with 68 of the total seats they can pass whatever they want in the house of representatives in spite of federalist oppositions so not only did the federalists lose control of the executive branch they lost control of the house of representatives but what about the senate in the senate that year the federalists lost four seats and the democratic republicans picked up three now the democratic republicans didn't get a majority but what they did is they essentially made it impossible for the federalist senate to pass any legislation through the senate without democratic republican consent so what's happened as a result of these elections what's happened as a result of these elections is that the federalists have lost their power in both the legislative branch and the executive branch and that scared a lot of people especially the federalists especially president of the united states john adams john adams who lost the presidential election of 1800 is still going to be president up until march of 1801 and during that time from the election of 1802 the inauguration on march 4th 1801 this is when we were deciding as uh in the house of representatives between burr and jefferson but the federalists who are going to be leaving office in both the house and the senate and the presidency they didn't sit on their hands instead they were going to come up with a scheme to pack the judicial branch of the federal government so that the federalists would still have some control and influence in the federal government after control of the legislative branch and the presidency passed to the democratic republicans so what are they going to do they're going to pack the courts now what does it mean to pack the courts well today it's going under a it's going through a revision of definition but here's what it's always traditionally meant packing the courts means that a congress will pass a bill pass a an act that creates more courts or creates more seats on current courts because congress as we saw in our pre previously in this lecture has the ability to create inferior courts as it deems fit it's implied then that congress not only can create more courts but can also expand the number of seats on courts okay that's one ingredient in packing a court the other ingredient is how do the judges get appointed to these courts it's the president that does that and then what happens in a court packing scheme is congress creates more courts or more seats on a court and then the president of the united states working with congress appoints judges to these courts that agree with everything the president and everything the congress are doing this is how you turn the judicial branch of the federal government into a virtually non-existent branch this is how you nullify right the judicial branch of the government but if your adams and you're the federalists that are leaving office in congress this is how you pack the courts so that you maintain influence and power in the federal government so how do they do it in 1801 as this federalist controlled congress is going to lose its power come march before it does that and before adams leaves office the federalist controlled congress is going to pass through both houses a law or a judiciary act and send it to the desk of president adams he will sign it into law and this act was known as the judiciary act of 1801 it's also known as the midnight judges act for a reason i'll explain here in a second so what does the judiciary act of 1801 do it's very simple it simply creates more courts and it also expands the number of seats on the us supreme court this is the first part of how you pack the courts you create more courts you create more seats on courts and now it's up to the president to appoint judges to all of these courts and when a judge gets appointed to a court the president united states signs a commission saying this is the court that so and so has been appointed to and that was the judiciary act of 1801 it's president john adams and the federalist controlled congresses attempt to pack the courts and it is successful so why does this matter well here's the thing they were going to create so many seats and so many courts meaning they required the appointment of so many judges that john adams was hard at work from november 1800 until he left office in march 1801 furiously appointing judges to these courts making sure that they are confirmed by congress and ensuring that his signed commission that these judges have to have get out on time and get out into the hands of these appointed judges before jefferson comes to power this is why it's called the midnight judges act jefferson and the incoming democratic republicans made the claim that adams was up until midnight on the last day of his term in office furiously signing these commissions now that's not true but it plays well in american politics so this is what adams and the federalists are doing they're packing the courts and they're adams is furiously signing these commissions getting them out as quick as possible for fear that if he doesn't get him into the hands of these judges jefferson might be able to stop the whole process and that actually happened most of these commissions signed by adams did get out in time and they did find their way into the hands of the judges that had been appointed and confirmed by the congress but there were a few commissions that never made it out and on march 4th 1801 when jefferson comes into office he finds these commissions commissions that should have been sent out but never made it out into the mail and never got into the hands of the judges that adams had appointed and one of these judges who did not have his commission by the time jefferson came into office was a guy by the name of william marbury marbury was a banker he was a businessman and he was also a midnight judge at point b he had absolutely no legal experience he is the perfect type of person that you would like to pack a court with because the only thing that made him a viable judge was that he was a 100 percent die-hard federalist and that's what we're trying to do he's simply a party hack he also looks a little bit like nicholas cage i think william marbury knew that he had been appointed by adams he knew that he had been confirmed by the congress yet william marbury didn't have his official commission from president adams it along with a few others was found by president thomas jefferson and his new administration and rather than send these commissions out and ensuring they get into the hands of these judges uh jefferson and his secretary of state james madison decided to withhold them now this wasn't done in secret everybody knew the commissions were in the hands of madison and in the hands of jefferson everybody knew it including william marbury so how did this case come about then this case came about because william marbury knew james madison had his commission he knew james madison was withholding that commission and so the way the case came about is william marbury sued james madison hence the name marbury vs madison so look that's a really long story how we get to this case but here we are we're now at this case now this case was going to be handled by the supreme court in the year 1803 and so i want to talk for a second about the supreme court as it existed in 1803. in 1803 there was a new chief justice of the us supreme court and it was actually a guy that had been a midnight appointee by john adams and his name was john marshall now john marshall is perhaps one of if not the most famous chief justices in american history the guy served on the supreme court's chief justice from 1801 all the way to 1835 and in the early years of the republic it was his court and it was largely his decisions in these courts in the supreme court that helped to elevate the judicial branch as an equal branch to the other two he really did help establish the independence of the judiciary as well as the supremacy of the judiciary and the equal equality of the judiciary as opposed to the executive and legislative branches the other thing about john marshall is this this guy was a hardcore federalist uh if you were going to pack the courts and ensure that the federalists maintained some influence and control in the federal government after losing it in 1800 this is the perfect guy to appoint as the chief justice now he was not a lawyer he'd never been a judge before but he had a brilliant mind one of the most brilliant people in american history very fortunate to have the chief justice of the supreme court in these formative early years of the republic be john marshall so it's going to be marshall's court that's going to hear this case and the way supreme courts like to address cases they they like to look for questions involved in the case and then answer the questions in this case really came down to three big questions the first was did william marbury deserve his commission now marbury claimed that he did marbury's argument in the case was i had been appointed by a president uh i had been confirmed by a congress and even though i didn't have my commission i'm still the judge of the court i've been appointed to and what madison and jefferson are attempting to do is to deprive me of my seat and marbury claimed that he deserves his commission on the grounds that he can't be denied his seat unless he quits or he dies because when judges federal judges are appointed and confirmed by congress they serve for life if they die they'll lose their job or if they quit that's the only way so what marbury was saying is he absolutely deserves his commission because he doesn't want to quit and he's not dead so he needs his commission okay did the court agree with marbury yes they did in this decision marshall's court said yes marbury does deserve his commission okay great second question did william marbury have any legal means by which he could force madison or force jefferson to hand over that commission this was a sticky one now william marbury contended that the legal means by which he could force madison and force jefferson to hand over his commission was the power of mandamus given to the supreme court in the 1789 judiciary act what marbury was requesting was that the supreme court of the united states issue a writ of mandamus a court order that forces madison to hand over the commission so the court needs to decide then does william marbury have any legal means to obtain his commission and in this decision marshall's court said yes marbury does however it is not the writ of mandamus now that came as a shock to marbury and it came as a shock to a lot of people that were expecting uh marshall to use this power of mandamus to force his political enemies of jefferson and madison to hand over the commission to marbury but you see marshall has bigger fish to fry here he doesn't care about william marbury he doesn't care whether marbury ever sits on the inferior court he's been appointed to what he cares about is sticking at the jefferson madison and elevating the court so what does he do in the decision he agrees that william marbury probably does have some legal means to get his commission but he doesn't know what it is and he doesn't know what it is because the the power of mandamus is not it and the reason he gave for this is he said that the power of mandamus given to the supreme court of the united states in a congressional law passed in 1789 was unconstitutional there was now hopefully you've seen what's happened here the reason he ruled the power of mandamus and that portion of the judiciary act of 1789 unconstitutional was he argued that the power of mandamus violated the separation of powers of the us constitution meaning that nowhere in the judicial or in article 3 of the constitution does it state that a power of the judicial branch over the other two branches is the power of mandanis it doesn't say that in there so how did the court get this power it was given to it by a federal law and there it was in the blink of an eye john marshall strikes down a federal law for the first time in american history so what does it all mean so hopefully by now you've you've seen the the heaviness of this situation and and the reason this case is so important it's really speaks to the genius of john marshall in recognizing an opportunity to not only stick it right to his uh political opponents in jefferson and madison and especially their ideas of the compact theory and these principles of 98 right in which they're claiming the states should be the arbiter of the of the constitution what you have here is john marshall elevating the supreme court to equal footing of the other two branches of the federal government by willingly declaring the tiny little power of mandamus to be unconstitutional simply by doing that he's establishing a precedent moving forward in american history the precedent being known as judicial review meaning the supreme court of the united states is granted the power of judicial review in the u.s constitution and here in the marbury verse madison case for the first time in american history john marshall has exercised that power of judicial review so to put it all together the significance of this marbury vs madison decision is the establishment then of the precedent known as judicial review in this country meaning that the supreme court of the united states is in fact the arbiter of the constitution and the arbiter of federal laws passed by congress the irony of this is that this was the first time this precedent of judicial review was uh was implemented and it wouldn't be implemented again for like 100 years you know and now it's just standard right but for a long time in american history the the the supreme court just really didn't do any of this stuff uh it never really exercised its power mostly because people didn't quite know how it should exercise that power or when it did exercise his power what it meant you know and that's why you saw then the rise of these principles of 98 the kentucky and virginia resolutions and these compact theories it's because nobody had done it and it gave rise the idea somebody's got to do it well marshall's idea was well if somebody's got to do it it's going to be the judicial branch because that's its job so significance of marbury's madison we have the establishment of the precedent known as judicial review so here's that first slide again it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial branch to say what the law is that was a portion of the marbury vs madison decision it's etched on a wall in washington dc a wall built to memorialize and to honor that person in the foreground and that's john marshall