Strike down unconstitutional acts
Courts can declare acts of Congress, the President, and the states unconstitutional and refuse to enforce them. It is the judiciary's heaviest tool and the reason a branch with no army or budget balances the other two.
No clause grants it. Marbury v. Madison (1803) reasoned that judges deciding cases under a written supreme Constitution must refuse to apply laws that conflict with it.
Every federal court; the Supreme Court has the last word
How it works in practice
Review happens only inside real cases: someone with standingThe requirement that a plaintiff show a concrete, particularized injury, caused by the defendant, that a court can redress. No injury, no case.Read the full definition (opens a new tab) must challenge a law's application, and the ruling binds through precedentA prior decision that guides or controls later cases. Courts must follow decisions of the courts above them; 'stare decisis' is the practice of standing by what was decided.Read the full definition (opens a new tab). Any federal court can hold a law unconstitutional; appeals carry the question up, and a Supreme CourtThe only court the Constitution itself creates. Nine Justices, life tenure, and near-total control over which cases they hear.Read the full definition (opens a new tab) holdingThe part of a decision that resolves the case and binds future courts: the legal rule applied to these facts. Everything else is dicta.Read the full definition (opens a new tab) binds every court. The counterweights are real but slow: new appointments, constitutional amendmentA formal change to the Constitution's text. Twenty-seven have been ratified. An amendment outranks every statute, regulation, and prior court decision.Read the full definition (opens a new tab), and the Court's own restraint doctrines.
Constitution Annotated, Marbury v. Madison
Terms to know: judicial reviewCourts' power to strike down laws and executive acts that violate the Constitution, established by Marbury v. Madison (1803).Read the full definition (opens a new tab) · standingThe requirement that a plaintiff show a concrete, particularized injury, caused by the defendant, that a court can redress. No injury, no case.Read the full definition (opens a new tab) · precedentA prior decision that guides or controls later cases. Courts must follow decisions of the courts above them; 'stare decisis' is the practice of standing by what was decided.Read the full definition (opens a new tab)