Judicial Review.

JUDICIAL review; SEPARATION of powers; CONSTITUTIONAL law; MARSHALL, John, 1755-1835; HISTORY of the United States Constitution

This article examines the concept of judicial review in U.S. political system. Judicial review can be defined as the power of courts to consider the constitutionality of acts of other organs of government when the issue of constitutionality is germane to the disposition of lawsuits properly pending before the courts. This power to consider constitutionality in appropriate cases includes the courts' authority to refuse to enforce, and in effect invalidate, governmental acts they find to be unconstitutional. Judicial review is America's most distinctive contribution to constitutionalism. Although courts have exercised judicial review almost from the beginning of American constitutional government, the question of the legitimacy of that judicial power has often provoked controversy as well as recurrent charges that American judges usurped the authority. Nearly two centuries of exercises of and popular acquiescence in the power have quieted the storms over its basic justifiability in recent decades, but vehement controversy continues regarding the proper scope and authority of judicial rulings on constitutionality. Moreover, particular exercises of judicial review continue to stir passionate political debates, as they have from the beginning. The classic justification for judicial review was set forth by Chief Justice John Marshall in Marbury versus Madison in 1803. Marshall relied on general principles and constitutional text. His arguments from principle are not compelling.