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Why The Judicial Branch Is The Most Powerful

478 Words2 Pages

Hana Kim
Professor Yvonne Wollenberg
Law and Politics 106
7 October 2015
Title
In the United States government, there are three branches called the legislative, executive, and judicial branch. Out of these three, the judicial branch is the most powerful. The judicial branch is made up of the Supreme Court, the court with the most power in the country, and other federal courts that are lower in the system; the purpose of this branch is to look over laws and make sure they are constitutional and reasonable. This process is called judicial review; judicial review by definition is the “power of a court to declare acts of governmental bodies contrary to the Constitution null and void” (Neubauer and Meinhold 492). Chief Justice John Marshall first brought up this power in the …show more content…

Madison court case that took place in 1803. The law that was declared by the Supreme Court at this hearing was that a court has the power to declare an act of Congress void if it goes against the Constitution. This case took place because President John Adams had appointed William Marbury as justice of the peace in the District of Columbia, and the new president, Thomas Jefferson, did not agree with this decision. William Marbury was not appointed by the normal regulation, which was that the Secretary of State, James Madison, needed to make a notice of the appointment. James Madison did not follow through and make a notice of Marbury’s appointment; therefore, he sued James Madison, which was where the Supreme Court came in place. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court at the time was Chief Justice John Marshall, and he declared that this whole process of delivering commissions for judges, the Judiciary Act, was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court declared this act illegal, because it gave the Supreme Court a power that they were forbidden to have. This is when the first law was declared unconstitutional and judicial review came into

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The United States of America between the time period of 1800-1835 were creating the first modern democracy. They had a separation of powers by creating a Legislative, Executive, and Judiciary Branch. The Legislative branch being the the Senate and House of Representatives, the Executive branch being the President and his advisors, and the Judiciary branch being the Supreme court. The Supreme Court informed and validated all the laws. In the end, the Supreme Court in many of their cases like Gibbons v. Ogden, McCulloch v. Maryland, Marbury v. Madison, and Cohens v Virginia made decisions that sought to assert federal power over state laws and the primacy of the judiciary in determining the meaning of the constitution.

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The court decided that Marbury would not get the commission. This case established the power of judicial rule by the supreme court. Fletcher v. Peck, 1810

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Under the Judiciary Act of 1801, Marbury sued Section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789. He was asking the Court to force Madison to accept the appointment. The court denied and held that it lacked strength because the section of the Judiciary Act passed by Congress in 1789 authorized the Court to issue such a writ was invalid. Chief Justice John Marshall declared that the Constitution must always

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“Before Jefferson took office on March 4, 1801, Adams and Congress passed the Judiciary Act 1801, which created new courts, added judges, and gave the president more control over appointment of judges. The Act was essentially an attempt by Adams and his party to frustrate his successor, as he used the act to appoint 16 new circuit judges and 42 new justices of the peace.”

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Adams had appointed several justices for the District of Columbia prior to being defeated. The senate had approved the commissions and the commissions signed by the president as well as being affixed with the government's official seal. However, the commissions were not delivered, and when Jefferson took office, he instructed James Madison the Secretary of States not to deliver them. William Marbury who was on the list of appointees petitioned the Supreme Court for a legal order compelling Madison to explain why he was not to receive the commission (Clinton 1994). Issues

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John Marshall’s Supreme Court hearings had a positive effect on the United States. From court cases like McCulloch v. Maryland, declared that the federal courts could decide if state laws were unconstitutional. The McCulloch v. Maryland trial went to the supreme court because Maryland had put a tax in place that too 2% of all assets of the bank or a flat rate of $30,000. John Marshall saw this tax as unconstitutional for the simple fact that people were being denied their property under the state legislature. From the Gibbons v. Ogden case, congress’s power over interstate commerce was strengthened.

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He expanded the power of the Supreme Court by declaring that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and that the Supreme Court Justices were the final deciders. In the Marbury vs. Madison case, Marshall wrote "It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” John Marshall was clearly in favor of judicial power, and believed that the Supreme Court should have the final say in cases involving an interpretation of the Constitution. While establishing this, he kept the separation of powers in mind, as he wanted equal representation among the Judicial, Executive, and Legislative branches. In the Marbury vs. Madison, John Marshall declared that the Judicial Branch could not force Madison to deliver the commission.

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In the 1803 case of Marbury v. Madison, the court used its jurisdiction authority to hear and decide the issues put forth in Marbury v. Madison. This Supreme Court case argued for William Marbury’s commission, although it was denied by Thomas Jefferson’s secretary, James Madison. This case further helped to establish judicial review, the power of the courts to review acts of other branches of government and the states. In the case of Marbury v. Madison, the court used appellate jurisdiction and eventually appellate court to review and revise the law made by a lower court.

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In Marbury v. Madison (1803) it was announced by the Supreme Court for the very first time, that if an act was deemed inconsistent with the constitution then the court was allowed to declare the act void. Thomas Jefferson’s secretary of state, James Madison, denied William Marbury of his commission. President John Adams appointed William Marbury the justice of peace for the District of Columbia during his last day in office. Madison denied Marbury of this commission because he believed that because it was not issued before the termination of Adams presidency, that it was invalid. Marbury himself started a petition, along with three others who were in a similar situation.

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The Judiciary Act of 1789 represented a compromise between those who wanted the federal courts to exercise the full jurisdiction allowed under the Constitution and those who opposed any lower federal courts or proposed restricting them to admiralty jurisdiction. The act acknowledged the legitimacy of the state courts and protected individual rights at the same time that it assured the supremacy of the federal judiciary. Extending the jurisdiction of the circuit courts to cases in which the parties were residents of different states greatly enhanced the importance of the federal courts. One of the most controversial provisions of the act, Section 25, granted the Supreme Court jurisdiction to hear appeals of decisions from the high courts of the states when those decisions involved questions of the constitutionality of state or federal laws or authorities. That and other provisions, such as the requirement for circuit riding, provoked frequent demands for revision of the act, but the basic outline of a multi-tiered federal court structure operating alongside state courts survives

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The power of judicial review came from the Supreme Court itself in a case called Marbury v Madison. Marbury v Madison is one of the most important cases in Supreme Court history because it gave the Supreme Court the power to void an act of Congress if it is inconsistent with the Constitution. Marbury v Madison was the first case to petition against what the branches can do and that is how judicial review was created. On February 28th, 1803, it was one of the last days John Adams was in office and he created a bunch of new judicial positions and appointed his allies to fill them. When Thomas Jefferson took office, his secretary of state, James Madison refused to give them the commissions to take the positions.

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