Finally it’s………FRIDAY!

Today is the anniversary of the day, in 1803, when the Supreme Court, led by John Marshall, issued their decision in Marbury v. Madison. Marbury is regarded as the single most important decision in American constitutional law. It established that the U.S. Constitution is actual law, not just a statement of political principles and ideals. It also helped define the boundary between the constitutionally separate executive and judicial branches of the federal government.

Marbury v. Madison was the first case in which the Supreme Court struck down a federal law as unconstitutional and it is most significant for its role in establishing the Supreme Court’s power of judicial review, or the power to invalidate laws as unconstitutional. As Marshall put it, “it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.”

The power of the Supreme Court to strike down laws that it sees as unconstitutional is a foundation of our three-part government. Marbury also established that the power of judicial review covers actions by the executive branch—the President and his cabinet members. However, American courts’ power of judicial review over executive branch actions only extends to matters in which the executive has a legal duty to act or refrain from acting, and does not extend to matters that are entirely within the President’s discretion, such as whether to veto a bill or whom to appoint to an office. This power has been the basis of later important Supreme Court decisions. In its 1974 decision United States v. Nixon, for example, the Supreme Court held that President Richard Nixon had to comply with a subpoena to provide tapes of his conversations for use in a criminal trial related to the Watergate scandal, which ultimately led to Nixon’s resignation.

I expect that this will be an important principle in the next few weeks, months and years.