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Marbury v. Madison: HowHistory Has Changed John Marshall's Interpretation of theConstitution—A Response to Winfield H. Rose

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2004

Christopher B. Budzisz
Christopher B. Budzisz
Affiliation:
Loras College
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Extract

In his April 2003 PS: Political Science and Politicsarticle “Marbury v. Madison: HowJohn Marshall Changed History by Misquoting the Constitution,”Winfield H. Rose presents an argument in which Chief JusticeMarshall knowingly distorted the meaning of the Constitution forstrategic gain. The strategic gain was the creation of judicialreview (the power of the Court to invalidate acts of other branchesof government as violative of the Constitution). The key means toachieve this goal was to intentionally misquote Article III in theCourt's most famous of cases, Marbury v.Madison (1803). Rose offers his argument as theproduct of a new discovery (that of detecting Marshall'smisquotation), and this discovery as the product of a fresh readingof the case. The reading is a “fresh” one because Rose looks anew atthe actual text of the decision and does not rely on the accepted“textbook wisdom” of the case. He calls us rightly to revisit thecase and follow him beyond the “conventional textbook wisdom”regarding the case. However, Rose's analysis fails in the endprecisely because it remains so wedded to the textbook wisdom onMarbury and judicial review that he advisesagainst.

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PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 37 , Issue 3 , July 2004 , pp. 385 - 389
Copyright
© 2004 by the American Political Science Association

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