Marbury V Madison Case And Its Effect On American Government System

There is something that affects how we live today but mostly everybody does not have a clue what it is. It is Judicial review and it came from the court case Marbury v Madison. To know how it affects us, we must go over how and why it was created, the pros and cons of the case, and how it affects the government branch as a whole.

To know where it all started first you need to see the history that led up to the Marbury v Madison case. It is hard to think about a world that does not have a Judicial review, but that is what the American government started in. When the colonist broke off from the tyranny of British forces, the colonists wanted to form a government that limited the power of the person that was in power because the colonists did not want to have another tyranny. The reason why this was the case is that it was a foreign concept when America’s were being built. This led to the creation of the Legislative branch, the Judicial branch, and the Executive branch including checks and balances along with some rights. Laws were also a thing that had to be implemented to maintain order. The laws that became commonplace originated from other written materials, such as the Magna Charta, the English Bill of Rights, and the Glorious Revolution. The constitution took inspiration from English law, philosophy, and history of other governments. The concept of law was very different in the 1800s and naturally, it was a rough outline. One of the effects of this was is that, there were no other forms of judicial review in history so there was nothing for the people base this idea off of. This gave too much power to the legislative branch of the government. When the possibility of the judicial review came in, it was considered controversial. As if the people at the time did not want it because it would take too much power away from Congress, and the colonists would not know the effects of judicial review until they started experimenting with it. All of this is ideas of judicial review was mostly theory. The theory was that the judicial branch should have equal amounts of power to all of the other courts. What this is trying to signal at is that every court must abide by the same fundamentals and principals as all the other courts that were in the country. All of this led up to a case known as Marbury v Madison. This case started when John Adams stayed up all night to the commission in all federalist judges so that all of the judges would share his same viewpoint. This is bad because it would cause a heavy imbalance and then this would also make the next president, Thomas Jefferson, have a hard time dealing with them, or getting anything done in general. In Adam’s rush, the administration would leave some of the commissions out and one of these was Marbury’s commission. Thomas Jefferson told his secretary of state to not deliver the commissions. The secretary of state at the time was James Madison. This led to a huge argument and Marbury tried to sue Madison and try to force him to comply. Marbury wanted to be in the office, but technically it was a gray area because Adam commissioned Marbury, but it was up to Thomas Jefferson if he wanted Marbury to be a judge. The reason why Thomas did not want Marbury as a judge was because Thomas already thought there were too many federalists in power, so the answer from him would have been a no. It was discussed and the Marshall said it was Marbury’s right to be in the office since the president did commission him in. The commission could not be delivered because if congress did have such power it would be unconstitutional. This entire case, allowed for the judicial branch to have some more power over the legislature. Which shifted legislative supremacy to judicial supremacy. During this whole debate, there were two sides. The people that benefited and the people who got hurt from it. I am going to be looking at it from the viewpoint of a regular citizen.

There is a major pro that did happen during the debate of the Marbury v Madison case. The major pro is that it limited the congress’s power to change the powers of the Supreme Court. Before this happened, there was about no limit to how much power that the legislative branch would have. This is a flawed system that would have been addressed one way or the other because checks and balances don’t work with such an imbalance. The problem with the system was that the legislative branch would have soon turned into a tyranny if it went unchecked. There is a minor con about the Marbury v Madison case. This con only affected the people that were about to become judges back in the 1800s and all the people in congress that have been elected. This was a negative impact for those judges because they were never put into office. The way it changed congress was that it severely limited the congress’s power to interpret the constitution or manipulate it into any way they want. For the people of America, this is a good thing because the more power that is distributed would mean that the people are safer from government corruption. One thing that could arise from an imbalance of power is that the branch could form a miniature tyranny or dictatorship if given enough time. All these changes did swing the United States of America into a new era and completely changed how the government worked.

For a basis, there was an extra power that was given to the judicial branch. This power is that the judicial branch can deem a law from congress unconstitutional. This is known as judicial review. Judicial review plays an important part in life for everybody that resides in America. For instance, if congress releases a law that violates the constitution, the Judicial branch would be able to step in and claim it to be unconstitutional. This would deny any of the other branches to have more power over the other and it works out better checks and balances. In a sense that every branch is getting balanced without the other one having more power than the other. This prevented tyranny because if it could have been done it would have already been done. Before this court case, there was almost no balance in the three branches with the legislative branch outweighing the other two branches in power. This also meant that the Judicial branch did not have enough power to maintain such a balance. I predict that if this did not happen, then the American government would be in worse shape than it is already in. Imagine this, the legislative supremacy would have been going on for about 200 years. This would be enough time for them to do some damage and who knows, maybe this could have led to a complete change in nationality if the government would have been weak and corrupt enough. If this case was in Marbury’s favor then it would have been bad news for all of America. There is no telling what could have happened if the legislative supremacy was still in progress.

Judicial review came from the ideas that congress could not be such an overbearing power compared to the three branches. Thanks to this, it has prevented many things that could have gone wrong with the new government system that the framers were trying to set up. This court case was more pros than cons for the people and it was negative for the congress since they lost quite a bit of power.