1- Discuss the role of the Supreme Court as interpreter of the Constitution, as seen in Merbury V. Madison, Martin V. Hunter Lessee, Cooper V. Aaron, and City of Boerne V. Flores.
The Supreme Court’s involvement in the intricacies of the social, political, and economic forces that shapes the lives of American citizens and their institutions can be traced to its assertion and use of judicial review, or the power to decide whether federal, state, and local laws violate the Constitution. Although the Court has no affirmative power to initiate legal action, it has encouraged a more litigious society through its willingness to accept and decide cases that raise questions once thought to be private or political in nature.
Judicial review enables the Court, in a single judicial stroke, to replace the customs, approaches, and rules of various regions, states, and localities with national constitutional standards. As we have reviewed many Supreme Court cases in our Constitutional Law class with Professor Brannon, one would think that the Court strikes down federal, state, and local laws with great regularity. Quite the opposite is, in fact, the case. Since the Court, in Marbury v. Madison (1803), first declared an act of Congress unconstitutional, the Court has upheld federal, state, and local laws against constitutional challenges much more often that it has not. Judicial review as a component of judicial Power is not mentioned in the Constitution. Ample evidence exists that the Framers intended the courts to have some sort of power to control the unconstitutional excess of majority rule. Although, judicial review can be seen as a profoundly anti-democratic exercise because the courts are not bound to the electorate, they have proved, in a majority of the cases that judges are not dominating the government, but walking right along with it. Judicial review, while the most potent instrument of judicial power, is not the sole element that defines the constitutional responsibilities of the federal courts.
In Calling the Judicial Power of the United States to be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as Congress may from time to time ordain and establish, the Framers handed victories to both, federalists and ant-federalists. The consensus of the delegates was that one appellate court positioned at the pinnacle of the nation’s judicial system was essential to ensure uniformity among the various federal and state courts. The First Congress made passage of the Judiciary Act of 1879 among its highest legislative priorities, and created a multi-tiered federal system of lower district and circuit courts, spelled out in even greater detail the original and appellate jurisdiction of the federal courts described in article III, and authorized the Supreme Court to hear appeals from these courts and also appeals from state supreme courts if the claims involved federal constitutional questions and cases that involved challenges to federal constitutional law.
Section 25 permitted the Supreme Court to hear cases appeal from state supreme courts when such courts 1-declared a federal law treaty unconstitutional, 2- ruled against an assertion of federal constitutional claim of right or privilege, or 3- upheld a state law that had been challenged as unconstitutional or illegal under the law of the U.S. The law, however, said nothing in Section 25 or anywhere else about the power of the federal courts to review congressional laws or executive actions. The power of the federal courts to review federal laws, long assumed as implicit to the exercise of judicial power, was assumed by the Court, after more than a decade of silence, in Marbury v. Madison. After two centuries after John Marshall explained and defended judicial review on behalf of a unanimous Supreme Court in Marbury v. Madison, scholars continue to debate the power that this landmark decision gave the Court to declare unconstitutional laws enacted by the political branches. The Supreme Court, despite its professed concern for judicial independence, had to impose self-restraint on its power to exercise judicial review, which concludes that the “courts as well as other departments, are bound” by the requirements of the Constitution. Marbury was used as an instrument through which to achieve equality rather than supremacy for the Court in the American constitutional system. It established the legitimacy of the Court in the American Constitutional system.
The Supreme Court role as an interpreter of the constitution on the case Marbury v. Madison decided that it has the power to review acts of the congress and declare them unconstitutional. The case is set forth when Marbury, appointed Justice of peace by outgoing President Adams, did not have his signed and sealed position delivered. Although Marbury has a right to his commission, and the appropriate remedy is a writ of mandamus, congress doesn’t have the power, under the constitution, to give the Supreme Court additional original jurisdiction. The original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court is defined by the constitution and cannot be enlarged by the congress. As mentioned before, Section 25 of the Judiciary Act gives the Supreme Court appellate jurisdiction in such cases. Is section 25 constitutional? Text of Article III Section 2, Paragraph 1: - The Judicial Power shall extend to all cases in law and Equity arising under this constitution; and Section2, Paragraph 2: - In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.
In the case Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee (1816), the Supreme Court gains ground by showing its capability of reviewing and potentially set aside decisions of State courts on questions of federal law.
Judicial Supremacy takes a turn when the Court, in Cooper V. Aaron (1958), announced “the basic principle that the federal judiciary is supreme in the exposition of the law of the Constitution” and that the court is the final, supreme expositor of the Constitution –into one inseparable package. (Ivers-60).
In this case the Supreme Court cited the fourteenth Amendment and the Brown v. Board of Education to bind the ruling, making it clear that Legislatures are not allowed to nullify Court
Judgments. On City of Boerne v. Flores (1997), Congress exceeds its enforcement power under section 5 of the fourteenth Amendment by enactment of the Religion Freedom Restoration Act. It is the duty of the Supreme Court to interpret the meaning of the constitution. Congress exceeds its authority when it attempts to override such an interpretation by statute. The Court considers congress’s power “of inquiry-with process to enforce it- [as] an essential and auxiliary to the legislative function” and thus implied by the very nature of the legislature’s role in separation of powers.
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