THE COURTS
In 1803, the U.S. Supreme Court declared in the case ofMarbury v. Madison that
the Supreme Court itself would determine whether U.S. laws - as passed by
Congress and signed by the President - are consistent with the Constitution. The
original Constitution did not give this power to the high court - but it did not exclude
it either. This practice, known as "judicial review," is highly controversial in other
democracies, but it is well established in the United States.

In the twentieth century, courts - particularly federal courts - have emerged as me
primary protectors of constitutional rights through the power of judicial review. For
example, the rights of racial minorities were greatly expanded by Supreme Court
decisions; the famous 1954 case known as Brown vs Board of Education ofTopeka
required public schools to be desegregated. Congress later followed the Court's
lead by passing laws such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a decade after the Court's
decision regarding desegregation.

Perhaps one reason that judicial review has been so widely accepted in the United
States is that many proponents of the Constitution themselves supported this kind of
role for the courts. In fact, they argued for judicial review using the same arguments

that had supported their original call for independence from Great Britain. In          -^

^

^\