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14 

MOORE v. HARPER 

Opinion of the Court 

lauded the Rhode Island judges “who refused to execute an 
unconstitutional  law,”  lamenting  that  the  State’s  legisla-
ture then “displaced” them to substitute others “who would
be willing instruments of the wicked & arbitrary plans of
their  masters.”  2  Records  of  the  Federal  Convention  of 
1787, p. 28 (M. Farrand ed. 1911).  A week later, Madison 
extolled as one of the key virtues of a constitutional system 
that “[a] law violating a constitution established by the peo-
ple themselves, would be considered by the Judges as null 
& void.”  Id., at 93.  Elbridge Gerry, a delegate from Massa-
chusetts, also spoke in favor of judicial review.  (Known for
drawing  a  contorted  legislative  district  that  looked  like  a 
salamander, Gerry later became the namesake for the “ger-
rymander.”)   At  the  Convention,  he  noted  that  “[i]n  some
States  the  Judges  had  [actually]  set  aside  laws  as  being 
agst. the Constitution.”  1 id., at 97 (alteration in original 
by  James  Madison).    Such  judicial  review,  he  noted,  was
met “with general approbation.”  Ibid. 

Writings in defense of the proposed Constitution echoed
these comments.  In the Federalist Papers, Alexander Ham-
ilton maintained that “courts of justice” have the “duty . . . 
to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Con-
stitution void.”  The Federalist No. 78, p. 466 (C. Rossiter 
ed. 1961).  “[T]his doctrine” of judicial review, he also wrote, 
was “equally applicable to most if not all the State govern-
ments.”  Id., No. 81, at 482. 

State cases, debates at the Convention, and writings de-
fending the Constitution all advanced the concept of judicial 
review.  And  in  the  years  immediately  following  ratifica-
tion, courts grew assured of their power to void laws incom-
patible  with  constitutional  provisions.  See  Treanor,  58 
Stan. L. Rev., at 473, 497–498.  The idea that courts may 
review legislative action was so “long and well established” 
by the time we decided Marbury in 1803 that Chief Justice 
Marshall  referred  to  judicial  review  as  “one  of  the  funda-
mental principles of our society.”  1 Cranch, at 176–177.