The US Supreme Court: Role and Judicial Review

The US Supreme Court exists because Article III of the Constitution creates it. That single fact explains most of what follows.

The US Constitution, ratified in 1788, is codified: a single written document that stands above ordinary law. It is also entrenched, meaning it can be amended only by a special route — a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress followed by ratification in three-quarters of the states. In more than two centuries it has been amended 27 times.

Because the Constitution outranks statute, someone has to decide when a statute conflicts with it. Article III vests "the judicial Power of the United States" in one Supreme Court, but it says remarkably little about what that power is for.

Feature	What the Constitution says	Consequence
Size of the Court	Nothing	Congress fixes it by statute — nine since the Judiciary Act 1869
Tenure	Judges hold office "during good Behaviour"	Life tenure in practice
Pay	Salary may not be "diminished" in office	Congress cannot punish Justices financially
Original jurisdiction	Cases involving ambassadors, or where a state is a party	Almost all work is appellate
Judicial review	Nothing at all	The Court claimed it for itself in 1803

The Court's defining power — striking down laws — appears nowhere in the document that created the Court. Understanding how it got that power is the whole of Section 4.1.

Marbury v Madison (1803) is the case in which the Supreme Court first declared an act of Congress unconstitutional. The specification names it, so you need the facts, the reasoning and the significance.

The facts. In the final days of his presidency in March 1801, the defeated Federalist John Adams appointed a batch of judges — the so-called midnight appointments. William Marbury was made a justice of the peace for the District of Columbia. His commission was signed and sealed, but not delivered before Adams left office. Thomas Jefferson, the incoming Democratic-Republican president, instructed his Secretary of State, James Madison, to withhold it.

Marbury went straight to the Supreme Court and asked for a writ of mandamus — a court order compelling an official to perform a duty. He relied on Section 13 of the Judiciary Act 1789, which appeared to give the Supreme Court power to issue such writs directly.

The reasoning. Chief Justice John Marshall worked through three questions:

Question	Marshall's answer
Did Marbury have a right to the commission?	Yes — it was signed and sealed, so the appointment was complete
Do the laws give him a remedy?	Yes — a government of laws must supply a remedy for a violated right
Can this Court issue that remedy?	No

The third answer is the one that matters. Article III lists the cases in which the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction, and Marbury's was not among them. Section 13 of the Judiciary Act purported to add to that list. A statute cannot enlarge what the Constitution fixes, so Section 13 was void and the Court had no power to hear the claim.

Marshall wrote that it is "emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is." That sentence is the foundation of judicial review.

The significance. Marshall handed Jefferson the immediate result he wanted — Marbury got nothing — while claiming for the Court a far greater power. A politically weak Court avoided a confrontation it could not have won and emerged with the authority to strike down federal law.

Marbury settled that the Court could void an act of Congress. Fletcher v Peck (1810) settled that it could void an act of a state legislature. The specification names both cases for that reason.

The facts. In 1795 the Georgia legislature sold around 35 million acres of western land — the Yazoo lands, in what is now Alabama and Mississippi — to land companies at a fraction of their value. Almost every legislator who voted for the sale had been bribed. Voters threw them out, and in 1796 the new legislature repealed the grant outright.

By then the land had been resold to buyers who knew nothing of the scandal. John Peck sold a parcel to Robert Fletcher in 1803, guaranteeing that the title was good. Fletcher sued, arguing that the 1796 repeal had destroyed the title.

The reasoning. Marshall's Court held that the original 1795 grant, corrupt though it was, amounted to a contract. Article I, Section 10 forbids any state from passing a law "impairing the Obligation of Contracts". The 1796 repeal did exactly that, so it was unconstitutional and void.

Case	Law struck down	Level of government	Constitutional provision used
Marbury v Madison (1803)	Judiciary Act 1789, Section 13	Federal	Article III
Fletcher v Peck (1810)	Georgia repeal Act 1796	State	Article I, Section 10

The significance. Together the two cases put every level of American government under the Constitution as interpreted by nine unelected judges. Fletcher also foreshadowed the Court's later role as an umpire of federalism, deciding where state power ends and federal power begins.

Judicial review is a process, not a single moment. Knowing the mechanics lets you explain why the Court can pick its battles.

1. Petition. A losing party in a federal appeals court or a state supreme court petitions for a writ of certiorari. The Court receives roughly 7,000 petitions a year.

2. The rule of four. Certiorari is granted if four of the nine Justices vote for it. In a typical term the Court hears around 60 to 70 cases — under one per cent of petitions. Declining a case leaves the lower court's ruling standing, so a refusal is itself a decision with consequences.

3. Briefs and oral argument. Each side files written briefs. Outside groups file amicus curiae briefs — submissions from interested parties who are not in the case. Interest groups use these heavily: in Fisher v University of Texas (2016) Harvard University, which ran its own affirmative action programme, filed a brief in a case about admissions at another university. Oral argument then gives each side about half an hour of intense questioning.

4. Conference and opinions. The Justices vote in private. The senior Justice in the majority assigns the writing of the majority opinion, which becomes binding precedent. Justices who agree with the result but not the reasoning write concurring opinions; those who disagree write dissents. A dissent has no legal force but can shape later arguments.

Under stare decisis the Court normally follows its own precedents. Departing from one is possible but exceptional, which is why overrulings such as Dobbs v Jackson (2022) reversing Roe v Wade (1973) are so politically explosive.

The specification asks specifically about the Court's independent nature. Independence here means insulation from the two elected branches, and it rests on four structural protections.

• Security of tenure. Article III gives Justices office "during good Behaviour", which in practice means for life or until they choose to retire. No electorate can remove them and no president can dismiss them.
• Security of salary. Congress may not reduce a Justice's pay while they serve, closing off the most obvious route to financial pressure.
• Removal only by impeachment. A Justice can be removed only if the House impeaches and two-thirds of the Senate convicts. Samuel Chase was impeached in 1804 over allegedly partisan conduct and acquitted by the Senate in 1805. No Justice has been removed from the Supreme Court by impeachment.
• Separation of powers. Personnel do not overlap between branches, so a Justice cannot sit in Congress or hold executive office.

Independence is also cultural. Chief Justice John Roberts issued a public rebuke in 2018 after President Trump attacked an "Obama judge", stating that the United States does not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. A Chief Justice correcting a sitting president in public is itself evidence of how the institution understands its own role.

Independence is not the same as neutrality. Justices hold judicial philosophies that shape how they read the Constitution. Independence means they cannot be punished for the conclusions they reach.

The Court is powerful but not untouchable. Alexander Hamilton called the judiciary the least dangerous branch in Federalist 78, because it commands neither the army nor the budget and depends on others to carry out what it decides.

Check on the Court	How it works	Example
Appointment	The president nominates and the Senate confirms, so vacancies reshape the Court	Amy Coney Barrett confirmed on 26 October 2020, eight days before that year's presidential election
Constitutional amendment	An amendment can reverse a ruling outright	The 26th Amendment (1971) set the voting age at 18 after Oregon v Mitchell (1970)
Congress sets the size	The number of Justices is statutory, not constitutional	Franklin Roosevelt's 1937 plan to add Justices was defeated in the Senate
Enforcement	The Court relies on the executive to implement rulings	After Brown (1954) desegregation stalled until federal troops were sent to Little Rock in 1957
Case selection	It can rule only on disputes brought before it	Certiorari is refused in the overwhelming majority of petitions

Public opinion matters too. The Court has no direct democratic mandate, so sustained public hostility to its rulings erodes the legitimacy on which compliance ultimately rests.

The clearest recent test of judicial review is the Court's handling of the second Trump administration. These examples also serve Section 4.3, which requires public-policy examples including post-2005 ones, and they are unusually well documented.

Worked case study — the tariffs ruling, February 2026. President Trump used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act 1977 to impose sweeping import levies. The Constitution reserves taxing powers to Congress, and the 1977 Act makes no reference to tariffs or duties. A six-Justice majority held that the president could not use that Act to impose the levies. The majority combined the three liberal Justices with Chief Justice Roberts and two of Trump's own appointees, Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch. Pearson's own April 2026 case study records it as the first fully briefed challenge to the administration's authority that it had lost.

Worked case study — the Illinois National Guard, December 2025. Six Justices held that the president lacked authority to take control of the Illinois National Guard and deploy it to Chicago over the objections of local officials. Again the majority included Justices appointed by the president whose action was struck down.

Set against this is the fuller record. Of 26 rulings on challenges to Trump administration actions during 2025, the administration won 21. Judicial review is a real constraint, but in that period it was an occasional one.

Earlier examples show the same pattern across administrations: NLRB v Canning (2014) limited Barack Obama's use of recess appointments; Trump v Hawaii (2018) upheld the travel ban on nationals of mostly Muslim countries; Biden v Nebraska (2023) blocked Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness scheme.

1. Saying the Constitution gives the Court judicial review

It does not. Article III creates the Court and defines its jurisdiction; judicial review was asserted by the Court itself in Marbury v Madison (1803). Getting this wrong undermines every later point about the Court's legitimacy.

2. Naming Marbury without explaining the reasoning

The mark is in the logic, not the label. Say what Section 13 of the Judiciary Act 1789 purported to do, why it clashed with Article III, and why Marshall's ruling gave the Court power while handing Jefferson the immediate victory.

3. Forgetting Fletcher v Peck

Section 4.1 names two cases. Fletcher is the one candidates omit, and it does distinct work: it extends judicial review from federal statute to state law using the Contract Clause. Without it your account of judicial review is only half built.

4. Treating independence and neutrality as the same thing

Life tenure and protected salaries insulate Justices from retaliation. They do not remove judicial philosophy. A good answer separates structural independence from ideological consistency and says which is doing the work in a given ruling.

5. Using only pre-2005 examples

Section 4.3 requires examples including post-2005 ones, and contemporary evidence strengthens a 4.1 answer too. Date-stamp what you use: the tariffs ruling of February 2026, the Illinois National Guard ruling of December 2025, and the 2025 record of 21 administration wins from 26 rulings are stronger than Brown v Board on its own.

6. Ignoring the Court's dependence on others

The Court cannot enforce its own judgments. Any evaluation of its power should note that compliance is a political choice by the executive, that Congress fixes the Court's size, and that an amendment can reverse a ruling — as the 26th Amendment did in 1971.