Judicial Branch Important Quotes

The Constitutional Convention quickly agreed to the proposal of Governor Edmund Randolph of Virginia for a national government of three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. Randolph’s resolution “that a national Judiciary be established” passed unanimously. Debating and defining the powers of Congress in Article I and of the president in Article II consumed much of the delegates’ attention and energy. Central provisions of Article III were the product of compromise and, in its fewer than five hundred words, the article left important questions unresolved. Lacking agreement on a role for lower courts, for example, the delegates simply left it to Congress to decide how to structure them. The number of justices remained unspecified. Article III itself makes no reference to the office of chief justice, to whom the Constitution (in Article I) assigns only one specific duty, that of presiding over a Senate trial in a presidential impeachment.

The Supreme Court first asserted its right to judicial review of all actions taken by the other branches of government in the case of Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803). This was the most famous, or infamous, decision handed down by the Marshall Court, and it was important for at least two reasons. First, the Court marked new territory for itself by asserting it had a judicial power to review the acts of other branches of the federal government. Additionally, this case signified the first time the Supreme Court declared an act of Congress to be unconstitutional. This would only happen one other time before the Civil War.

The Founding and the Constitution WHAT GOVERNMENT DOES AND WHY IT MATTERS The framers of the U.S. Constitution knew why government mattered. In the Constitution’s preamble, the framers tell us that the purposes of government are to promote justice, to maintain peace at home, to defend the nation from foreign foes, to provide for the welfare of the citizenry, and, above all, to secure the “blessings of liberty” for Americans. The remainder of the Constitution spells out a plan for achieving these objectives. This plan includes provisions for the exercise of legislative, executive, and judicial powers and a recipe for the division of powers among the federal government’s branches and between the national and state governments. The framers’ conception of why government matters and how it is to achieve its goals, while often a matter of interpretation and subject to revision, has been America’s political blueprint for more than two centuries. Often, Americans become impatient with aspects of the constitutional system such as the separation of powers, which often seems to be a recipe for inaction and “gridlock” when America’s major institutions of government are controlled by opposing political forces. This has led to bitter fights that sometimes prevent government from delivering important services. In 2011 and again in 2013, the House and Senate could not reach agreement on a budget for the federal government or a formula for funding the public debt. For 16 days in October 2013, the federal government partially shut down; permit offices across the country no longer took in fees, contractors stopped receiving checks, research projects stalled, and some 800,000 federal employees were sent home on unpaid leave—at a cost to the economy of $2–6 billion.1 39