Skip to main content

This Honorable Court

March 2023
2min read

The Supreme Court has become the most powerful judicial body in the world. In a new series under the editorship of Professor John A. Garraty , AMERICAN HERITAGE examines the crucial, often bitterly fought cases that have helped define the Court s unique role as a shaper of the nation’s history

The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” So begins Article III of the United States Constitution. This simple sentence provides the authorization for the entire structure of the federal judiciary. The Supreme Court, unique, prestigious, but controversial, is the crown of the system. Beyond question it is the best-known and most powerful judicial body in the world. Designed chiefly as a court to settle arguments between the states, matters involving foreign ambassadors, and other quarrels beyond the scope of state courts, it has from the time of John Marshall to that of Earl Warren added to its power by slow accretion, until today its influence is felt in every aspect of American life. Troops deploy, governmental agencies and great corporations dissolve, little children march past jeering mobs to school, because nine black-robed justices in Washington have discovered new meanings in an old and hallowed document.

Our Constitution has endured over the years because of its flexibility. The Founding Fathers knew better than to pin down their descendants too closely. Enduring principles rather than petty details were what they sought to establish in the long days of drafting at the Philadelphia convention. Moreover, they anticipated the need for future growth. They provided an orderly process for amending the Constitution, and they provided a Supreme Court to modify it when necessary by interpretation. But they did not expect that the Court would have so much to do with the growth and evolution of their handiwork—more, perhaps, than all the amendments taken together.

The Court has expanded and shaped the American government, through the influence of its decisions in specific cases that have come before it. The most important of these cases are well known to lawyers and historians. Even those who studied American history years ago will remember some of their names, although they may forget what it was that Marbury had against Madison, or why Dartmouth College was in trouble with the law. Trying to understand the modern Constitution without a knowledge of these landmarks would be like trying to comprehend Christianity without reading the Bible.

In the series that begins here, a number of historians will re-examine some of these cases from a new angle. To a remarkable degree, the element of chance has governed the evolution of the Constitution. The Court is powerless until some actual suit is brought to it for settlement. If Congress should abolish trial by jury, for example, nothing could be done about it until someone convicted without a jury trial went to court to obtain his rights. Such a person might be a great reformer unjustly persecuted, but he might just as well be a tramp convicted of robbing a henhouse. Constitutionally, it would not matter. Indeed, many trivial arguments begun by men concerned not at all with basic law have often resulted in decisions that have shaken the foundations of American society.

No doubt this is all strange and sometimes illogical. But it is part of American history, and a particularly absorbing part, because its fundamental elements are conflict, surprise, and human passion. The cast of characters in our dramas includes men of every sort—tycoons and black slaves, ferryboat captains, rebels, and, in the case of William Marbury, whose sad tale I examine in the following pages, a man who was only trying to get a job that had been promised him.

—J. A. G.

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate

Stories published from "June 1963"

Authored by: Jeanne Van Nostrand

The crusading conservationist thought he had saved the fur seal from extinction. Then from the Pribilofs, home of the last great herd, came an alarming telegram:

Authored by: Richard M. Ketchum

Sixty-five years before the bomb destroyed Hiroshima, a medicine man from Sf. Louis dreamed up a weapons system “so terrible and devastating” as to banish war forever. He would be, he modestly admitted, the savior of mankind

Authored by: John D. Weaver

By freight train, on foot, and in commandeered trucks, thousands of unemployed veterans descended on a nervous capital at the depth of the Depression—and were run out of town by Army bayonets

The aged ex-President grew giddy and his family became alarmed as the mask-maker’s formula hardened around his venerable head

Authored by: Shelby Foote

Could ironclads successfully attack land positions? No one knew. Into the very “nest of the rebellion,” sewn with mines and ringed by bristling forts, steamed the proud monitors of the Union fleet

Authored by: Suzanne T. Cooper

Of resorts and vacationers in the long ago, when the sports wore stiff collars and the dream girls five-piece bathing suits, and Americans became reacquainted with nature

Authored by: The Editors

The Supreme Court has become the most powerful judicial body in the world. In a new series under the editorship of Professor John A. Garraty , AMERICAN HERITAGE examines the crucial, often bitterly fought cases that have helped define the Court s unique role as a shaper of the nation’s history

Authored by: Allan Nevins

Were the great business tycoons of the nineteenth century only that? A distinguished historian says no—most emphatically

Authored by: Bertha L. Heilbron

An artist turned land agent used his paintings to promote paper townsites in Minnesota. Though most of these settlements failed to materialize, his charming record of an opening frontier remains

Authored by: Louis C. Jones

Who was the prosperous Negro in the long-lost painting? Scraps of evidence pieced together have revealed him to be

Featured Articles

Rarely has the full story been told about how a famed botanist, a pioneering female journalist, and First Lady Helen Taft battled reluctant bureaucrats to bring Japanese cherry trees to Washington. 

The world’s most prominent actress risked her career by standing up to one of Hollywood’s mega-studios, proving that behind the beauty was also a very savvy businesswoman. 

Often thought to have been a weak president, Carter was strong-willed in doing what he thought was right, regardless of expediency or the political fallout.

Why have thousands of U.S. banks failed over the years? The answers are in our history and politics.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.