What was the court case Marbury v Madison actually about?

Answer 1

Boiled down considerably, it was about someone (Marbury) not receiving his appointment to a judicial position.

In a nutshell, here's what happened:

In early 1801, John Adams was President. He had not been re-elected; the incoming president was to be Thomas Jefferson. The election had been decided on February 17, but Jefferson would not actually take office until March 4.

Adams and Jefferson had considerably different opinions on the proper role of the federal government. Adams was a Federalist, and Jefferson was a Democrat-Republican (it makes sense if you know US political history; if not, just think of him as an Anti-Federalist). Adams, and the Federalist-controlled congress, decided to make trouble for the incoming administration, and passed a law modifying the judiciary branch.

The new law, the Judiciary Act of 1801, decreased the number of Supreme Court Justices by one (so that Jefferson wouldn't have the opportunity to appoint a new Justice until at least two of the existing members had either died or retired). It also increased the number of circuit courts and district courts, so that Adams could appoint a large number of judges before leaving office. These new judges had 5 year terms, meaning their terms would last until after the next Presidential election.

Another law, the Organic Act of 1801, allowed Adams to appoint an unspecified number of Justices of the Peace to serve the newly created federal territory of Washington, DC. Contrary to popular belief, Marbury v. Madison was not about the Judiciary Act of 1801, but about circumstances that developed from the Organic Act.

Adams appointed nearly 60 people to the new positions thus created, and Congress confirmed the appointments, just prior to the new administration taking over.

However, these appointments did not take effect automatically; the commissions had to be delivered to the appointees by the Secretary of State. The outgoing Secretary of State, John Marshall, did not manage to deliver all the commissions before leaving office, and turned the undelivered ones over to the incoming Secretary of State (nominally Madison) for delivery. Marbury's was one of these undelivered commissions.

However, Jefferson ordered that the undelivered commissions NOT be delivered, and the incoming Congress essentially repealed the Judiciary Act of 1801.

Marbury then sued Madison in an attempt to force him to deliver the commission.

The Court ultimately decided 4-0 that Marbury had a right to the commission, but that the Court lacked jurisdiction to compel Madison to deliver it, as the Judiciary Act of 1789, which authorized the Court to do so, was unconstitutional.

(As an interesting bit of trivia, the Chief Justice of the Court that heard this case, and the author of the Court's opinion, was John Marshall, the outgoing Secretary of State who had to some extent caused the whole mess by not delivering the commission in the first place.)

[Marshall was unable to complete the task of delivering the commissions before Adams (and Marshall) left office because Congress didn't pass the Organic Act of 1801 until a few days before the end of Adams' term. The Justice of the Peace positions were low-level five-year appointments, so Marshall reasonably believed delivery would be completed as matter of routine, not become the subject of a case before the Supreme Court.]

Unless otherwise stated, this was called "judicial review".