History of the Judiciary 

The Supreme Court

Marbury v. Madison(1803)

     It was the eve of first major presidential turnover in American history. John Adams, after losing the election of 1800, was urgently working in his office during the days of late February and early March 1801 attempting to leave some sort of lasting Federalist influence in the government. The obvious target was the justice system where job positions were relatively secure and the country's laws were interpreted. Adams' efforts were hardly individual - the then-Federalist Congress teamed up to pass the Judiciary Act of 1801 which drastically reorganized the justice system set up by the Judiciary Act of 1789. There is some technical issues with this whole thing, but for right now, we'll address the core of the issue.

     The new Act broadened the power of the Judiciary by creating 10 new district courts and gave the President the authority to appoint all the judges. The number of justices in the Supreme Court was also reduced to 5 in order to prevent Jefferson from appointing any Anti-Federalists in the coming years. Anyway, Adams went on to appoint the judges to all these newly created offices - essentially a flurry of Federalist judges assumed offices that were made more significant. This sounds like a really smart move... but was it legal?

     As the story goes, Adams' appointments were sent out by the Secretary of State (by custom). Unfortunately for Adams, not all the appointments could be sent during his term, leaving some of these appointees without formal recognition of their new positions. One such person was William Marbury. Under commands from Thomas Jefferson, the new Secretary of State, James Madison, did not send out the remaining commissions. Marbury immediately filed a lawsuit, hence leading to the monumental Marbury v Madison case (by the way, the first name indicates who filed the suit).

     In the end, John Marshall, the Chief Justice (and an Adams appointee) created the power and role of the Supreme Court.  In the opinion he wrote for the unanmious court, he explained that although Marbury was granted his commission, it was not constitutional for the Supreme Court to issue the writ of mandamus (the issuing of the writ had, under the Judiciary Act of 1789, been granted to the Supreme Court).   In one fell swoop, Marshall and the Federalist court gave itself its own power to decide the constitutionality of a federal law (in this case, the Judiciary Act of 1789).  Thus Marshall created the power of judicial review by engaging in judicial review.^[1] 

  The Supreme Court was never the same.  And since then has the Court has been reviewing federal laws and changing its views with every caseThere are three court cases in Americas history that show this quite well, and these cases were: Dred Scott v. Sanford, Plessy v. Ferguson, and Brown v. Board of Education. These three cases were about rights of African Americans.

Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857)

     Dred Scott v. Sanford was about the rights of a slave (Dred Scott) who was purchased in a slave state but then was moved to a free state and then moved to the Wisconsin Territory which was free and lived there for a extended period of time. Scott was moved then to the South to St. Louis and then to Louisiana. Because Scott had lived in a free state of Illinois for two and a half years he could argue that he had the right to be a free man but he needed to make his case when he lived in Illinois or Wisconsin, but since he made the case in the South he was not granted this freedom. Scott tried to buy his freedom for $300 but it was refused. This caused Scott to take his case to court. Ten years later after many court cases Scott took his case to the Supreme Court where it was declared that he had no rights as a citizen of the United States because African Americans were not truly citizens. 

     One of the reasons that Scott lost the case in the Supreme Court was because five of the nine justices were from families that had slaves. Dred Scott v. Sanford shows that a court can make on ruling regarding an issue involving race, and ninety-seven years later a court of different justices can make the opposite decision in a case that also involves racial discrimination. ^[2]

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

     Plessy v. Ferguson was a case that argued over whether or not racial discrimination was unconstitutional when equal accommodations were given such as bathrooms and in this case train cars. In this case Louisiana had a staute the "Separate Car Act" that required all trains to have separate cars for African Americans. One railroad company wanted to the Act to be abolished because of costs. This railroad company (The East Louisiana Railroad Company) was working with a group of black citizens. They chose a one eighth black man named Homer Plessy, who purchased a first class ticket from New Orleans to Covington, Louisana to sit in the car for white passengers.  Their hope was that he would be arrested so that the law of separate train cars could come under judicial review.  Plessy was arrested, and when Plessy went to court he argued that the Act violated the Thirteenth and Fourthtenth Amendments of the Constitution (see Chapter 1 if you forgot what those were). The presiding judge had ruled on a similar case that the Act was unconstitutional when a train traveled over state lines but since Plessy's train stayed within the state of Louisana it was considered constitutional and Plessy was found guilty.^[3]   Plessy took the case to the Louisiana Supreme Court and the ruling was upheld. Plessy then took it to the Supreme Court and the ruling was still upheld because the train offered equal accommodations.  The famous doctrine that this case established (and that would last for another 60 years) was the "Separate but Equal" doctrine. ^[4]  

Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

     In Topeka, Kansas, there lived a young African American girl named Linda Brown who wanted to go to a school that was closer to her house, Sumner School, but this school was a school for whites. At the time of the case there were segregation laws that were allowed because of Plessy v. Ferguson so Linda Brown was not allowed to attend Sumner. So the Browns felt that the colored schools were not equal to the white schools so Linda Brown was not protected under the Fourteenth Amendment. When the Browns took the case to the court in Kansas it found that the schools were equal in all aspects of education and because of this decision the Browns took their case to the Supreme Court who found that it was indeed unconstitutional and ruled in favor of the Browns.^[5]

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