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Back
to Resource Guides
Legal History
Historical
Overview
When John Marshall became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1801, the court met in the basement of the U.S. Capitol and was rarely in session longer than six weeks a year. Since its creation in 1789, the court had decided only one hundred cases. Since the landmark cases of Marbury v. Madison (1803) and Fletcher v. Peck (1810), in which the court established the principle that it could declare acts of Congress and state laws unconstitutional, the courts have become a co-equal branch of government and the final arbiters of the constitutionality of state and federal statutes.
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This
site was updated on 23-Nov-09.
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