Scholars have ignored the most important question in one of the most famous constitutional law cases, obscuring the machinations that spawned the dispute. This Article sheds light on the events that precipitated Marbury v. Madison and also explains when an appointment vests. Thomas Jefferson famously refused to deliver a commission to William J. Marbury, causing the latter to seek a writ of mandamus from the Supreme Court. The received wisdom supposes that Jefferson’s refusal rested on the grounds that Marbury had not been appointed a justice of the peace precisely because he never had received a commission. In fact, Jefferson’s delivery argument was a post-hoc rationalization, having nothing to do with his actions in March of 1801. John Adams’s midnight appointments incensed Jefferson, leading the new President to treat all of the justice of the peace appointments as nullities. To Jefferson, the failure to deliver commissions to some of those appointees mattered not a whit. What seems to have been far more significant is his sense that the justices of the peace served at his pleasure. Acting on this belief, he simultaneously removed them all and recess appointed most of them, save for more than a dozen, including William J. Marbury. This Article also addresses whether William J. Marbury and the other midnight appointees who never received their commissions were nonetheless appointed, considering five theories of when an appointment vests: when the Senate consents; after consent but before commissioning; when commissioning occurs; with the delivery of a commission; and with acceptance of the office. In the course of considering these theories, the Article discloses the surprising fact that Thomas Jefferson, as Secretary of State, endorsed the second theory, namely that appointments vest before the act of commissioning. Moreover, well before Marbury v. Madison, the Adams Administration likewise concluded that appointments could vest prior to any commission being issued or delivered. Despite this convergence, the Article contends that none of the five theories is correct because each reads the Constitution as enshrining a single answer regarding when an appointment vests. There is no single answer. Rather an appointment vests whenever the President determines that it shall. The Constitution grants power to the President to appoint, never precisely specifying when or how an appointment vests. By not specifying when or how appointment is made, the Constitution leaves it to the President to decide the manner in which he appoints. This conclusion derives from a general principle of constitutional law: When the Constitution grants power to an entity but does not specify the precise means by which it will be exercised, the grantee may decide the means of exercising it.
For the over half-million people currently homeless in the United States, the U.S. Constitution has historically provided little help: it is strongly...
The Environmental Law and Community Engagement Clinic at the University of Virginia School of Law filed this amicus brief on behalf of San Bernardino...
Who has the legal right to challenge decisions by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration? And should the moral umbrage of a group of anti-abortion...
President Joe Biden promised during his State of the Union address on March 7, 2024, that he would make the right to get an abortion a federal law.
“If...
Gradualism should have won out in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, exerting gravitational influence on the majority and dissenters alike. In general...
Today, legal culture is shaped by One Big Question: should courts, particularly the US Supreme Court, have a lot of power? This question is affecting...
On December 15, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued its decision in Illumina, Inc. v. FTC. Although the court vacated and...
On January 17, the Supreme Court heard arguments in what are potentially the most significant commercial law cases of the last decade. In the...
Constitutional review is the power of a body, usually a court, to assess whether law or government action complies with the constitution. Originating...
This Article introduces the Jurist-Derived Judicial Ideology Scores (JuDJIS), an expert-sourced measure of judicial traits that can locate nearly...
It is widely believed that President Donald Trump’s judicial appointments reflected a strategy of appeasing evangelical Christians and other religious...
Cyber stalking involves repeated, often relentless targeting of someone with abuse. Death and rape threats may be part of a perpetrator’s playbook...
We apply a dynamic influence model to the opinions of the U.S. federal courts to examine the role of the U.S. Supreme Court in influencing the...
During times of crisis, governments often consider policies that may promote safety, but that would require overstepping constitutionally protected...
The United States has granted reparations for a variety of historical injustices, from imprisonment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War...
Supreme Court opinions involving race and the jury invariably open with the Fourteenth Amendment, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, or landmark cases like...
This Article develops a new way of understanding the law in order to address contemporary debates about judicial practice and reform. The...