First Parties, Part II
The States' Rights Theory of government said that the states, independent and sovereign, had created the federal government. Therefore, the states were the boss. They created the federal government, and they had the right to decide when it was right or wrong. They also felt they had the right to leave the Union they had created, much as a member resigns from a club. They viewed the federal government much as we view the United Nations today. This was the view of the Democratic-Republican Party.
So the Democratic-Republicans felt that any state had the right to declare a law "null and void" and not in effect in a given state. This idea was called Nullification. They did not feel the federal government should decide whether or not its own actions or laws were constitutional.
Judicial Review was established as a precedent by the case Marbury v. Madison. When the Federalists lost both the White House and Congress in the election of 1800, they spent the "lame duck" period, the time between their defeat in the election in November 1800 and the time they actually left office in March 1801, creating new positions in the federal judiciary and filling them with federalists. This was their attempt to retain control of the judicial branch of the federal government after losing the other two branches in the election.
These "midnight judges" (judges appointed in the very last moments of the Adams Administration) were appointed so late in this period, that many were confirmed but had not received their signed and sealed commissions from the secretary of state's office. When Jefferson took over, his secretary of state, James Madison, found many of the commissions still on his desk. He refused to deliver them, and declared the positions vacant. In a test case, William Marbury, who had been appointed to a five-year term as a Justice of the Peace in the District of Columbia, sued in the U.S. Supreme Court. In Marbury v. Madison, he asked the Supreme Court to issue a writ of mandamus ordering Madison to deliver the commissions.
The Supreme Court consisted entirely of federalists and was headed by Chief Justice John Marshall. Marshall was a cousin of President Thomas Jefferson and the two men did not like each other personally as well as disagreeing on almost everything politically. It was widely assumed Marshall and the federalist court would side with Marbury and order the commissions delivered.
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