Judical politics

Marshall was able to establish the judiciary's role in our government with this decision by answering the question that if the courts do not have this power, who does. .
             The significance of the Marbury v. Madison decision is far reaching. Before the 1803 decision, .
             the court had never really been a factor in our government, so much that the 1802 session was terminated .
             by President Jefferson. The case established the Supreme Court's authority to review and strike down governmental actions that did not follow the Constitution. Marshall believed that although the framers of the Constitution did not explicitly write the power of judicial review into the constitution, it was what the framers intended. I will discuss this argument in greater detail later. .
             After the Marbury v. Madison decision, the Marshall court enjoyed a new found power, but rarely found occasion to use it since most of the cases that were heard were rather trivial private law disputes. However, the court was able to hand down a number of .
             important opinions interpreting various aspects of the Constitution. After Marshall's .
             death in 1835, Roger B. Taney ascended to the chief justiceship. Taney, unlike Marshall, was a Jacksonian Democrat, and a strong supporter of President Jackson and his view of state's rights. It was Taney who passed down the infamous 1857 decision in Dredd Scott v. Sandford, which displayed the court's belief that blacks had no real Constitutional status and that the court strongly supported state's rights. Furthermore, the Dredd Scott decision worsened conditions for nationalists, and inevitably pushed our nation closer to civil war. .
             After the war had ended, the court again found itself busy with a large caseload due to the many commercial and private disputes raised by the war. Chief justices Salmon Chase and Morrison Waite helped to reestablish Congressional power over the defeated South, but had little chance to use its power of judicial review during this time or repair.