TODAY: On this day in 1803, the U.S. Supreme Court first ruled a law unconstitutional in the case of Marbury versus Madison.
The case shaped judicial review in the U.S., bringing the issue of checks and balances to the Supreme Court.
Second President John Adams made several political appointments before leaving office after one term, to be succeeded by Thomas Jefferson. William Marbury was to be one of the appointments. As the appointments were not formally delivered before Adams left office and Jefferson came in, this left the third president with the responsibility to carry out the appointments.
Because there were political differences between Jefferson and the proposed appointees, the president refused. Marbury and the others sued directly in the U.S. Supreme Court, asking for a “writ of mandate” for the new secretary of state, James Madison, to make the appointments.
Chief Justice John Marshall used the Constitution to declare power over the legislative branch of government, striking down a federal law which would have given the Supreme Court the power to issue the writ of mandate by direct Supreme Court appeal.
Marshall essentially declared the judiciary had power over the legislative branch, because it has the final say on interpreting the Constitution.
This premise, of course, still stands today.
Also of note in history today, in 1868, the House of Representatives voted 126 to 47 to impeach President Andrew Johnson for firing of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton without approval of the Senate.
The first presidential impeachment trial began March 5, 1868. Johnson was ultimately acquitted, with one Republican who defied his party to vote for acquittal — Sen. James Grimes of Iowa — saying, “I cannot agree to destroy the harmonious working of the Constitution for the sake of getting rid of an unacceptable president.”
Johnson served the remainder of his term, leaving office on March 4, 1869. In 1874, he ran a successful senatorial campaign and returned to Washington — “to the very chamber where he had been tried and acquitted a few years earlier,” according to the U.S. Senate archives.
Johnson served only three months before his death on July 31, 1875.
