empt. At least Marshall did what cautious men seldom do
when they respect an adversary, he took the first opportunity to pick a
quarrel with a man who had the advantage of him in position.

In the last days of his presidency John Adams appointed one William
Marbury a justice of the peace for the District of Columbia. The Senate
confirmed the appointment, and the President signed, and John Marshall,
as Secretary of State, sealed Marbury's commission; but in the hurry of
surrendering office the commission was not delivered, and Jefferson
found it in the State Department when he took possession. Resenting
violently these "midnight" appointments, as he called them, Jefferson
directed Mr. Madison, his Secretary of State, to withhold the
commission; and, at the next December term of the Supreme Court, Marbury
moved for a rule to Madison to show cause why he should not be commanded
to deliver to the plaintiff the property to which Marbury pretended to
be entitled. Of course Jefferson declined to appear before Marshall,
through his Secretary of State, and finally, in February, 1803, Marshall
gave judgment, in what was, without any doubt, the most anomalous
opinion he ever delivered, in that it violated all judicial conventions,
for, apparently, no object, save to humiliate a political opponent.

Marshall had no intention of commanding Madison to surrender the
commission to Marbury. He was too adroit a politician for that. Marshall
knew that he could not compel Jefferson to obey such a writ against his
will, and that in issuing the order he would only bring himself and his
court into contempt. What he seems to have wished to do was to give
Jefferson a lesson in deportment. Accordingly, instead of dismissing
Marbury's suit upon any convenient pretext, as, according to legal
etiquette, he should have done if he had made up his mind to decide
against the plaintiff, and yet thought it inexpedient to explain his
view of the law, he began his opinion with a long and extra-judicial
homily, first on Marbury's title to ownership in the commission, and
then on civil liberty. Having affirmed that Marbury's right to his
office vested when the President had signed, and the Secretary of State
had sealed the instrument, he pointed out that withholding the property
thus vested was a violation of civil rights which could be examined in a
court of justice. Were it otherwise, the Chief Justice insisted, the
government of the United States could no