The U.S. Constitution – Law Of The Land

A general misconception is that any statute passed by legislatures bearing the appearance of law constitutes the law of the land.

The U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and any statute, to be valid, must be in agreement. It is impossible for a law that violates the Constitution to be valid. This is succinctly stated as follows: “All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void.” Marbury vs. Madison 5 US (2 Cranch) 137, 144, 176, (1803)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dbl2Lrle3VA&w=850&h=478]

From The Encyclopedia Britannica

Marbury vs. Madison is a legal case in which, on February 24, 1803, the U.S. Supreme Court first declared an act of Congress unconstitutional, thus establishing the doctrine of judicial review. The court’s opinion, written by Chief Justice John Marshall, is considered one of the foundations of U.S. constitutional law.

Background

In the weeks before Thomas Jefferson’s inauguration as president in March 1801, the lame-duck Federalist Congress created 16 new circuit judgeships (in the Judiciary Act of 1801) and an unspecified number of new judgeships (in the Organic Act), which Adams proceeded to fill with Federalists in an effort to preserve his party’s control of the judiciary and to frustrate the legislative agenda of Jefferson and his Republican (Democratic-Republican) Party. Because he was among the last of those appointments (the so-called “midnight appointments”), William Marbury, a Federalist Party leader from Maryland, did not receive his commission before Jefferson became president. Once in office, Jefferson directed his secretary of state, James Madison, to withhold the commission, and Marbury petitioned the Supreme Court to issue a writ of mandamus to compel Madison to act.

Marbury and his lawyer, former attorney general Charles Lee, argued that signing and sealing the commission completed the transaction and that delivery, in any event, constituted a mere formality. But formality or not, without the actual piece of parchment, Marbury could not enter into the duties of the office. Despite Jefferson’s hostility, the court agreed to hear the case, Marbury v. Madison, in its February 1803 term.

Some scholars have questioned whether Marshall should have removed himself from the case because of his prior service as Adams’s secretary of state (1800–01). Certainly, later judicial standards would have called for recusal, but at the time only financial connections to a case led judges to step aside, as Marshall did in suits regarding Virginia lands in which he had an interest. The Republicans, always quick to criticize Marshall, did not even raise the issue of the propriety of his sitting in the case.
The issue directly presented by Marbury v. Madison can only be described as minor. By the time the court heard the case, the wisdom of Jefferson’s desire to reduce the number of justices of the peace had been confirmed (and the Judiciary Act of 1801 had been repealed); Marbury’s original term was almost half over; and most people, Federalists and Republicans alike, considered the case to be moot. But Marshall, despite the political difficulties involved, recognized that he had a perfect case with which to expound a basic principle, judicial review, which would secure the Supreme Court’s primary role in constitutional interpretation.

The Decision

The chief justice recognized the dilemma that the case posed to the court. If the court issued the writ of mandamus, Jefferson could simply ignore it, because the court had no power to enforce it. If, on the other hand, the court refused to issue the writ, it would appear that the judicial branch of government had backed down before the executive branch and that Marshall would not allow. The solution he chose has properly been termed a tour de force. In one stroke, Marshall managed to establish the power of the court as the ultimate arbiter of the Constitution, to chastise the Jefferson administration for its failure to obey the law and to avoid having the court’s authority challenged by the administration.

Marshall, adopting a style that would mark all his major opinions, reduced the case to a few basic issues. He asked three questions: (1) Did Marbury have the right to the commission? (2) If he did, and his right had been violated, did the law provide him with a remedy? (3) If it did, would the proper remedy be a writ of mandamus from the Supreme Court? The last question, the crucial one, dealt with the jurisdiction of the court, and in normal circumstances, it would have been answered first, since a negative response would have obviated the need to decide the other issues. But that would have denied Marshall the opportunity to criticize Jefferson for what the chief justice saw as the president’s flouting of the law.

Following the arguments of Marbury’s counsel on the first two questions, Marshall held that the validity of a commission existed once a president signed it and transmitted it to the secretary of state to affix the seal. Presidential discretion ended there, for the political decision had been made, and the secretary of state had only a ministerial task to perform—delivering the commission. In that the law bound him, like anyone else, to obey. Marshall drew a careful and lengthy distinction between the political acts of the president and the secretary, in which the courts had no business interfering, and the simple administrative execution that, governed by law, the judiciary could review.

Having decided that Marbury had the right to the commission, Marshall next turned to the question of remedy, and once again found in the plaintiff’s favor, holding that “having this legal title to the office, [Marbury] has a consequent right to the commission, a refusal to deliver which is a plain violation of that right, for which the laws of his country afford him a remedy.” After castigating Jefferson and Madison for “sport[ing] away the vested rights of others,” Marshall addressed the crucial third question. Although he could have held that the proper remedy was a writ of mandamus from the Supreme Court—because the law that had granted the court the power of mandamus in original (rather than appellate) jurisdiction, the Judiciary Act of 1789, was still in effect—he instead declared that the court had no power to issue such a writ, because the relevant provision of the act was unconstitutional. Section 13 of the act, he argued, was inconsistent with Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution, which states in part that “the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction” in “all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party,” and that “in all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction.” In thus surrendering the power derived from the 1789 statute (and giving Jefferson a technical victory in the case), Marshall gained for the court a far-more-significant power, that of judicial review.

Impact

Marshall’s masterful verdict has been widely hailed. In the face of attacks on the judiciary launched by Jefferson and his followers, Marshall needed to make a strong statement to maintain the status of the Supreme Court as the head of a coequal branch of government. By asserting the power to declare acts of Congress unconstitutional (which the court would not exercise again for more than half a century), Marshall claimed for the court a paramount position as interpreter of the Constitution.Although Marbury v. Madison set an abiding precedent for the court’s power in that area, it did not end debate over the court’s purview, which has continued for more than two centuries. In fact, it is likely that the issue will never be fully resolved. But the fact remains that the court has claimed and exercised the power of judicial review through most of U.S. history—and, as Judge Learned Hand noted more than a century later, the country is used to it by now. Moreover, the principle fits well with the government’s commitment to checks and balances. Few jurists can argue with Marshall’s statement of principle near the end of his opinion, “that a law repugnant to the constitution is void, and that courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument.”

 

 

0 thoughts on “The U.S. Constitution – Law Of The Land”

  1. Silence Knewbetter

    It appears that we have lost all three branches of government to a corrupt and immoral band of thieves.

  2. WORD=1 Every single possible thing breaks down to this single element that gives it power, and regulates its strength, PERIOD! And that is the STARTING LINE for repairing logic & perception. THERE ARE NO SHORTCUTS! It is the entrance to the GREAT AWAKENING and the KEY hidden in plain sight humanity has been missing since GOD spoke this disc and everything on it into existence, it’s in the Book of Genesis, even in its current edited state by the deceiver. It is THE MOST POWERFUL WEAPON there is,but you don’t know how it works because since birth, the ability to see it has slowly been reprogrammed not to have the tools that recognize it. Right NOW, all of humanity is imprisoned by the semantics of grammar because they don’t know how the rules of grammar work well enough to recognize the ambiguities of language to see “television programming” in the literal sense. GOD SPOKE this PLANEt into Existence using his WORD! But this missing component of the thinking process prevents you from visualizing it Words control EVERY aspect of human existence. They control everything. And until you have successfully retrained your total mindset with this logic, you will not have the perception to see that you are a slave and the key to freedom has been right in front of you in plain sight the entire time. You won’t have the tools to use it to open the invisible bondage of grammar semantics because you can’t understand the fraudulent grammar construct being used in the the13th &14th Amendments. It is really as simple as this. The wordsmith of people(living)person(dead), and property(thing) in a specific word association construct is the fraud Adopted into law on Feb.21, 1871, for the surrender of “The Republic For The United States of America” to the Corporation, USA, Inc. replacing the Constitution with US Code, and the Common Law with Admiralty Jurisdiction(commercial) Military Tribunals that see people as dead property that has no rights. The Constitution and the US Code contradict each other. Knowing that should tell you which one is in effect now. The US Code is USA, Inc. Corporate Charter. The ONLY reason the corporation has pretended the Constitution is still the law of the land is because they haven’t found a way to trick us into surrendering our GUNS! TODAY We The People had a Supreme Court Ruling that set that cornerstone back into the foundation. A step in the right direction. But until the People can collectively reprogram the grammar semantics to recognize how wordsmithing works, that vulnerability of exploitation still exists.
    The Illuminati has a long list of names Freemasons, Knights Templar, The Rosicrucian’s. The noble, romanticism has increased over the history of the Templars, but if you look at the imagery, symbols, and connections, they don’t come close to the text. They have been described as the protectors of Christian artifacts and texts, when the reality they were destroying them to hide the Roman Catholic Church replacing some of the Bible Text with their heretic beliefs and terminology. Every time the word “lord” is in the Bible is an example of that heresy. Rhe point of all of this background is relative to the deceptive power of a word. And in this case, it is a direct correlation to The Book of Genesis, in the Garden of Eden, another grammar rule, the “Divine Providence” stipulation in freedom of choice and temptation. Gods word again instructing the serpent that ALL temptation must have an obvious alternative choice.
    Words start and end Wars, arguments, and contracts. WORDS like: Nazi, antisemitism, racism, fascism, and holocaust were created to hide the ZIONIST SLAVEmasters reality

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