Judicial review in the United States refers to the power of a court to review the constitutionality of a statute or treaty, or to review an administrative regulation for consistency with either a statute, a treaty, or the Constitution itself.
The United States Constitution does not explicitly establish the power of judicial review. Rather, the power of judicial review has been inferred from the structure, provisions, and history of the Constitution.
The Supreme Court's landmark decision on the issue of judicial review was Marbury v. Madison (1803), in which the Supreme Court ruled that the federal courts have the duty to review the constitutionality of acts of Congress and to declare them void when they are contrary to the Constitution. Marbury, written by Chief Justice John Marshall, was the first Supreme Court case to strike down an act of Congress as unconstitutional. Since that time, the federal courts have exercised the power of judicial review. Judicial review is now a well settled doctrine. As of 2010, the United States Supreme Court had held unconstitutional some 163 Acts of the U.S. Congress.
Read more about Judicial Review In The United States: Judicial Review Before The Constitution, The Provisions of The Constitution, Marbury V. Madison, Judicial Review After Marbury, Criticism of Judicial Review, Standard of Review, Laws Limiting Judicial Review, Administrative Review
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“Ethnic life in the United States has become a sort of contest like baseball in which the blacks are always the Chicago Cubs.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“Scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“Reading any collection of a man’s quotations is like eating the ingredients that go into a stew instead of cooking them together in the pot. You eat all the carrots, then all the potatoes, then the meat. You won’t go away hungry, but it’s not quite satisfying. Only a biography, or autobiography, gives you the hot meal.”
—Christopher Buckley, U.S. author. A review of three books of quotations from Newt Gingrich. “Newtie’s Greatest Hits,” The New York Times Book Review (March 12, 1995)
“When, in some obscure country town, the farmers come together to a special town meeting, to express their opinion on some subject which is vexing to the land, that, I think, is the true Congress, and the most respectable one that is ever assembled in the United States.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A little group of wilful men reflecting no opinion but their own have rendered the great Government of the United States helpless and contemptible.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)