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12 

MOORE v. HARPER 

Opinion of the Court 

that are alleged to violate the Federal Constitution in Mar-
bury v. Madison, proclaiming that “[i]t is emphatically the
province  and  duty  of  the  judicial  department  to  say  what
the law is.”  1 Cranch 137, 177 (1803).  Marbury confronted 
and rejected the argument that Congress may exceed con-
stitutional limits on the exercise of its authority.  “Certainly
all those who have framed written constitutions,” we rea-
soned, “contemplate them as forming the fundamental and 
paramount law of the nation, and consequently the theory 
of every such government must be, that an act of the legis-
lature, repugnant to the constitution, is void.”  Ibid.
  Marbury proclaimed our authority to invalidate laws that 
violate the Federal Constitution, but it did not fashion this 
concept out of whole cloth.  Before the Constitutional Con-
vention convened in the summer of 1787, a number of state 
courts had already moved “in isolated but important cases 
to impose restraints on what the legislatures were enacting
as law.”  G. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic
1776–1787,  pp. 454–455  (1969).    Although  judicial  review
emerged  cautiously,  it  matured  throughout  the  founding 
era.  These state court decisions provided a model for James 
Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and others who would later 
defend the principle of judicial review.

In the 1786 case Trevett v. Weeden, for example, lawyer
James  Varnum  challenged  a  Rhode  Island  statute  on  the 
ground that it failed to provide the right to a jury trial.  Alt-
hough Rhode Island lacked a written constitution, Varnum
argued  that  the  State  nevertheless  had  a  constitution  re-
flecting the basic historical rights of the English.  And, he 
contended, the courts must honor “the principles of the con-
stitution in preference to any acts of the General Assembly.” 
J. Varnum, The Case, Trevett v. Weeden, reprinted in 1 B.
Schwartz, The Bill of Rights: A Documentary History 424 
(1971).  Varnum won, to the dismay of the State’s legisla-
ture,  which  replaced  four  of  the  five  judges  involved.    W. 
Treanor, Judicial Review Before Marbury, 58 Stan. L. Rev.