It is February 26th. Welcome to Episode 57 of History in a Year. Today, we witness the ultimate lame-duck revenge and the most brilliant legal magic trick in American history. After losing the Election of 1800, John Adams stays up until midnight packing the federal courts with his political allies to build a fortress against Thomas Jefferson. But when a few pieces of paper are accidentally left on a desk, it sparks a massive constitutional crisis. We explore the frantic final hours of the Adams administration, the fury of Thomas Jefferson, and how Chief Justice John Marshall deliberately lost a battle to win the war—inventing the awesome power of Judicial Review in the process.
STEPHEN:
Welcome to History in a Year: America’s First 250 Years.
LEAH:
Join us every single day as we journey from the Revolution of 1776 to the 250th anniversary of the United States.
STEPHEN:
You can find every episode and join the discussion at PointedWords.com. I’m Stephen.
LEAH:
And I’m Leah.
STEPHEN:
It is February 26th. Welcome to Episode 57. The year is 1801, and the Federalist Party has just suffered a catastrophic, crushing defeat in the Election of 1800.
LEAH:
Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans didn’t just win the presidency; they swept the House of Representatives and the Senate. It was a total political wipeout. The Federalists were effectively dead as a national political force.
STEPHEN:
But there is a quirk in the American political calendar. Back then, the elections were held in November and December, but the new President and the new Congress didn’t actually take office until March 4th.
LEAH:
That meant John Adams and his defeated Federalist Congress had a “lame-duck” period of almost four months. They had four months of absolute, unchecked power before they had to hand the keys over to Thomas Jefferson.
STEPHEN:
And they were not going to go quietly. The Federalists looked at the map. They had lost the Executive Branch. They had lost the Legislative Branch. But there are three branches of government in the United States.
LEAH:
They still controlled the Judicial Branch. And unlike the President or members of Congress, federal judges serve for life.
STEPHEN:
So, the Federalists hatched a brilliant, incredibly petty, and highly effective plan. They decided to pack the courts.
LEAH:
In February 1801, just weeks before Jefferson’s inauguration, the lame-duck Federalist Congress passed the Judiciary Act of 1801.
STEPHEN:
This law reorganized the entire court system. It created 16 brand-new federal circuit court judgeships, plus dozens of new lower-level positions—justices of the peace, marshals, clerks, and attorneys.
LEAH:
And in the pettiest move of all, the law actually shrank the size of the Supreme Court. It stated that the next time a Supreme Court justice retired or died, their seat would simply be eliminated, reducing the court from six justices to five.
STEPHEN:
Why? Simply to deny Thomas Jefferson the chance to appoint someone to the Supreme Court! They literally changed the size of the highest court in the land just out of political spite.
LEAH:
As soon as the bill was passed, President John Adams went to work. He had to fill all these brand-new lifetime appointments with loyal Federalists before March 4th.
STEPHEN:
He nominated judges, the lame-duck Federalist Senate immediately rubber-stamped them, and then Adams signed their commissions.
LEAH:
But the most consequential appointment Adams made happened at the very top. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court had just resigned for health reasons. Adams needed to replace him.
STEPHEN:
Adams turned to his Secretary of State, a 45-year-old Virginian named John Marshall.
LEAH:
John Marshall was a brilliant lawyer, a staunch Federalist, and—this is the most important part—he was Thomas Jefferson’s second cousin. And they absolutely despised each other. They hated each other on a deeply personal, cellular level.
STEPHEN:
Adams appointed Marshall as Chief Justice. And because the Senate was about to go home, Marshall actually kept doing his old job as Secretary of State while serving as the new Chief Justice. He was doing double duty for the last month of the administration.
LEAH:
The clock was ticking down. It is now March 3rd, 1801. Thomas Jefferson is scheduled to be inaugurated the very next day.
STEPHEN:
The scene inside the executive offices was absolute chaos. John Adams was sitting at his desk, furiously signing judicial commissions as fast as he could. Because he was literally signing these documents up until the final hours of his presidency, history calls these men the “Midnight Judges.”
LEAH:
But a piece of paper with the President’s signature isn’t enough to make someone a judge. There is a strict legal process.
STEPHEN:
First, the President signs it. Second, the Secretary of State has to stamp it with the Great Seal of the United States. And third, the commission has to be physically delivered to the person.
LEAH:
John Marshall—who, remember, is acting as Secretary of State—was running around stamping these documents with the Great Seal. But he ran out of time.
STEPHEN:
At midnight, the Adams administration officially ended. Marshall had managed to stamp all the commissions, but there was a stack of them still sitting on his desk that hadn’t been physically delivered yet.
LEAH:
Marshall looked at the stack of undelivered commissions and essentially said, “Well, I’m out of time. My shift is over. They are signed and sealed. The new guy can deliver them tomorrow.” And he walked out the door.
STEPHEN:
The next day, March 4, 1801, Thomas Jefferson was inaugurated as the third President of the United States. He walked into the State Department office and found that stack of undelivered commissions sitting on the desk.
LEAH:
He looked at the names. They were all hardcore Federalists. They were his worst political enemies, placed there by John Adams at the very last second.
STEPHEN:
Jefferson was furious. He told his brand-new Secretary of State—his best friend, James Madison—to throw them in the trash. He told Madison, “Do not deliver them. If they aren’t delivered, these men aren’t judges.”
LEAH:
Jefferson thought he had solved the problem. The Federalists had tried to pull a fast one, but he had caught them on a technicality.
STEPHEN:
But one of the men on that undelivered list was a wealthy Maryland financier named William Marbury.
LEAH:
Marbury had been appointed as a Justice of the Peace for the District of Columbia. It wasn’t a glamorous job, but Marbury was a proud Federalist, and he wanted his commission. He knew John Adams had signed it. He knew the Great Seal was on it.
STEPHEN:
So, William Marbury marched up to the new Secretary of State, James Madison, and demanded his piece of paper. Madison refused.
LEAH:
Marbury wasn’t going to take no for an answer. He hired a lawyer. And he didn’t file a lawsuit in a normal, lower trial court. He went straight to the top. Marbury filed a petition directly with the Supreme Court of the United States.
STEPHEN:
He asked the Supreme Court to issue a “Writ of Mandamus”—a royal court order commanding a government official to do their job. He wanted the Supreme Court to legally force James Madison to hand over the paper.
LEAH:
And who was sitting in the center chair of the Supreme Court, waiting to hear this case? Chief Justice John Marshall. The exact same guy who had forgotten to deliver the paper in the first place!
STEPHEN:
This sets up the landmark case of Marbury v. Madison. And it is a massive political trap for John Marshall.
LEAH:
If Marshall orders Madison to hand over the paper, President Thomas Jefferson will simply ignore the order. Jefferson will say, “Make me.” And the Supreme Court has no army to enforce its rulings. It would prove to the world that the Supreme Court is weak and powerless.
STEPHEN:
But, if Marshall backs down and says Marbury doesn’t get his commission, then Marshall looks like a coward who is just bowing to Thomas Jefferson’s political pressure.
LEAH:
It was a lose-lose situation. But John Marshall was a genius. He found a third option. He pulled off the greatest legal magic trick in American history.
STEPHEN:
When Marshall issued his ruling in 1803, he broke it down into three questions.
LEAH:
Question 1: Does William Marbury have a right to his commission? Marshall said, “Yes. The President signed it, the seal is on it, it belongs to him. Jefferson is acting illegally by holding it back.”
STEPHEN:
Question 2: Does the law grant Marbury a remedy? Marshall said, “Yes. In a nation of laws, if your right is violated, the law must provide a way to fix it.”
LEAH:
Question 3: Is a Writ of Mandamus from the Supreme Court the correct remedy?
STEPHEN:
And this is where Marshall drops the hammer. He says… “No.”
LEAH:
Marshall points to the Judiciary Act of 1789—the law that gave the Supreme Court the power to issue Writs of Mandamus in the first place. Marshall looks at that law, and then he looks at the US Constitution.
STEPHEN:
Marshall says, “The Constitution gives the Supreme Court very specific, limited powers. Congress passed a law giving us more power than the Constitution allows.”
LEAH:
Therefore, Marshall declares, that specific section of the Judiciary Act is unconstitutional. It is null and void. The Supreme Court literally cannot help William Marbury, because the law allowing them to do so is illegal.
STEPHEN:
It was a brilliant sleight of hand. Marshall technically “lost” the battle. Marbury didn’t get his job, and Jefferson didn’t have to hand over the paper. Jefferson won the specific case.
LEAH:
But John Marshall won the war.
STEPHEN:
Because in declaring that law unconstitutional, John Marshall established the principle of Judicial Review.
LEAH:
For the first time ever, the Supreme Court boldly declared that it had the ultimate power to strike down laws passed by Congress and signed by the President if they conflicted with the Constitution.
STEPHEN:
Marshall wrote: “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.”
LEAH:
He gave up a minor Justice of the Peace position, and in exchange, he made the Supreme Court the ultimate referee of the United States government. It is the ruling that gives the Supreme Court its awesome power today.
STEPHEN:
Thomas Jefferson was furious. He realized exactly what his cousin had just done, but he couldn’t fight it, because he had technically won the case!
LEAH:
While Jefferson and Marshall were fighting constitutional battles in Washington, a much larger, physical battle was brewing on the western horizon.
STEPHEN:
Join us tomorrow for Episode 58. The Louisiana Purchase. We step into the backrooms of Paris to witness a diplomatic miracle. Napoleon Bonaparte needs cash to fight the British, and Thomas Jefferson wants to buy a river. We watch as the United States accidentally buys half a continent and completely changes the destiny of the world.
LEAH:
I’m Leah.
STEPHEN:
And I’m Stephen.
STEPHEN:
You can find every episode at PointedWords.com. And this… is our story.