It started with paperwork that never got delivered. After the bitter election of 1800, John Adams rushed to fill new judgeships with Federalist Midnight Judges, but William Marbury’s signed and sealed commission never reached him. Thomas Jefferson told James Madison to withhold it, and Marbury took his case straight to the Supreme Court, asking for a writ of mandamus.

This episode explains how Chief Justice John Marshall, who as acting Secretary of State had failed to deliver the commission, turned a no-win political trap into the 1803 ruling that created judicial review. By striking down part of the Judiciary Act of 1789, Marshall let Jefferson win the immediate fight while claiming lasting power for the courts, a power that runs through Dred Scott and the Watergate tapes to today.

• Why ordering Madison to deliver, or backing down, would both have damaged the young Supreme Court
• Marshall’s three questions and his declaration of a government of laws and not of men
• The conflict between Section 13 of the Judiciary Act and Article III’s limits on original jurisdiction
• Critiques of the ruling: Marshall’s conflict of interest and his skipping of easier ways to decide the case
• Why the Court did not strike down another federal law for more than 50 years