Why is the judicial branch peculiar to madison
S2E9: Article III, Marbury, and the Judicial Branch
hey guys welcome back um today we're
going to start talking about a branch of
our government that might be the most
misunderstood
lots of people when they think of the
judicial branch of the united states
government
they think only of the supreme court
when in fact a lot of the most important
parts of the judicial branch of our
government
are the 94 district courts that are
spread around the country
today we're going to understand a little
bit more about the judicial branch and
where am i standing
i'm standing not more than a couple of
miles away from where you are right now
i'm down on spielbush avenue this is the
u.s federal courthouse in toledo the
original
uh customs and courthouse in toledo and
i hope you'll
join me today as we try to understand
the role of this place
and how it fits into the judicial branch
of our american government everybody
this is the beginning of a four-part
series on the judiciary and we're going
to look at just the constitutional
foundations
of the judicial branch so here we go um
the constitution really doesn't say that
much i'm going to show you the words
real quick and then we're going to
actually look at them
section one section two done
that's it that's all there is in the
constitution about the entire judicial
branch
so let's look at each section real
quickly and just kind of understand
what were they getting at the judicial
power of the united states shall be
vested in
one supreme court and in such inferior
courts as the congress may estab
made from time to time ordained and
established pause what does that mean
it says there's one supreme court right
so there we get that does it tell us how
many justices
does it tell us exactly what cases
they're gonna hear it does not
um then in such inferior courts is
congress may from time to time ordain
and establish
does it tell us how many does it tell us
where they're going to be does it
tell us how many judges does it tell us
how many layers
it does not um then it goes on to just
describe the judges so you can see that
the number of judges the number of
courts has been left
wide open for congress to figure out by
themselves then
the judges both of the supreme and
inferior courts
shall hold their offices during good
behavior and shall its stated times
reser
receive for their services a
compensation
which shall not be diminished during
their continuance in office
so again we have something really
interesting happening here
does it give them a term limit no
does it say how long their term is no
does it say how old they have to be no
how long they had to be a citizen what
state they had to reside in
no no it says nothing
okay so it's wide open this is not like
anything we've seen in article one or
article two
it goes on section two
and this is where it maybe gets a little
boring but i i think it's all really
important
obviously it's important it wouldn't be
in the constitution judicial power shall
extend to all cases
arising under this constitution the laws
of the united states and treaties made
to all cases affecting ambassadors other
public ministers
and councils to all cases of admiralty
in maritime jurisdiction
to controversies to which the united
states shall be a party to controversies
between
two or more states between a state and
citizens of another state
between citizens of different states
between citizens of the same state
claiming lands under grants of different
states and between a state
or the citizens thereof and foreign
states citizens
or subjects what does all that mean
those are all federal laws
okay so anything that's federal law gets
heard
in a federal court anything that deals
with a person from one state and a
person from another state
or people arguing about anything outside
of their state
is automatically a federal jurisdiction
deal
next bullet point in cases affecting
ambassadors
other public ministers and consuls and
those in which a state shall be a party
the supreme court shall have original
jurisdiction
in all other cases before mentioned the
supreme court shall have appellate or
appeals jurisdiction with such
exceptions and under such regulations as
congress shall make
well look at that little part there it
says congress can decide
what cases they're going to hear at the
supreme court but it does say that the
supreme court
will get appeals jurisdiction over all
cases
unless congress tells them no
checks and balances my friends so
let's go back to one of the first things
we talked about lifetime
tenure it doesn't say anywhere in there
how long the term for a supreme court
justice
an appeals court justice or a federal
judge is
and what that has been interpreted as is
lifetime
tenure all federal judges serve for the
rest of their lives
or as long as they want they can retire
at any point
most will eventually but they don't
until they're good and old
uh because why would you if you've got a
guaranteed job
so federal judges serve life
appointments
if they're in good behavior why
why did they choose a president for four
years
a congress for two years a senate for
six years
but a supreme court appeals court
federal court forever why did they
choose do this let's look at the two
reasons
because i think they're pretty good
reasons number one
it was supposed to guarantee an
independent judiciary
judges don't have to do the popular
thing to get reelected
a president if he or she wants to get
reelected has to do things that are
pretty popular
a congress person absolutely has to do
things that are popular
if they're going to get reelected what
they decided with our judges
is that interpreting the law is too
important to leave to a doggone
popularity contest what we want are
people who go
into the courts and make the right
decision
based on what the law is supreme court
chief justice john roberts
when he was confirmed back in the 2000s
said my job is like an
umpire in a baseball game i call balls
and strikes
i don't make up the strike zone i don't
i don't care which team is up there
i call the balls and strikes as i see
him and robert's description
is exactly what we want out of supreme
court justices
and all other federal judges we don't
want them making up the law
we don't want them favoring one side or
the other though some of them do which
we'll talk about later
we want them calling balls and strikes
so how do you do that how do you get
judges who are going to call balls and
strikes you give them a lifetime job
and you say this job is yours for the
rest of your life
if you promise to behave yourself and
interpret the law
the way it's written not the way you
think it ought to be
um second consistency and this is again
something that's changed very recently
but one of the other big reasons for a
lifetime tenure
was to have consistency we don't want a
situation where
all of a sudden five judges on the
supreme court are getting replaced
by a whole bunch of people who are the
same and everything about the law
changes having a lot of supreme court
justices
change over in a short period of time is
a recipe for disaster historically
very few good things come out of that
because everything about the
underpinnings of the law can change
and our entire system is based on the
idea that
things are going to stay about the same
things are going to
slowly move remember how we talked about
a slow deliberative process
with the congress we talked about the
presidency being a deliberately slowed
down office
this is one of the things that's
supposed to deliberately slow down the
judicial branch is the idea that
no one person is just going to replace a
bunch of judges at once
this is one of the underpinnings of our
constitutional system
so we talked about three different types
of courts
um the constitutional courts the courts
that are set up under article three
um george washington kind of establishes
them with a judiciary act early in his
administration um we have u.s district
courts
okay so this is level one and if we're
looking at a pyramid
this is the broad base of the pyramid
going up to the top which is the supreme
court
so there are 94 u.s district courts
one of them is the one that you saw at
the beginning of the video that's right
in downtown toledo
no matter what high school you're at
that courthouse is no more than 20
minutes from wherever you're watching
this video right now
unless you're out of state for some
reason um
there are 93 other us district courts
all over the united states and there's
one over in cleveland one in cincinnati
so on and so forth there are district
courts all over the place what do they
do in those places
well they hear federal federal crimes
and federal lawsuits so a federal crime
is typically a violation of federal law
so if you break federal election law
then that's going to go to a federal
court if you
um kidnap somebody in michigan and bring
them into ohio
by crossing a line that's a federal
crime if you steal
mail that's a federal crime that goes
right to that federal courthouse it
doesn't go to the lucas county
courthouse those
judges that we elect at the county level
they never see you
a federal judge does so federal crimes
federal lawsuits if you sue somebody
from another state
that goes to the federal court if
somebody from another state sues you
it's a federal court so federal crimes
and federal
lawsuits if you file a
gender discrimination uh lawsuit
under u.s law that would go to a federal
crime or any other kind of civil rights
laws lawsuits under federal law
would go through the federal courthouse
in toledo now next one
we actually get these in toledo not
every district court does
and i love these maritime suits
so any kind of lawsuits dealing with
stuff that happens on the high seas
goes to a federal court we in toledo
have
navigable water so we kind of have high
seas
in toledo going out into lake erie
because those ships that come into
the ports up by the i-75 bridge and the
ports out by
uh woodward and the coast guard station
and and the big tower on the east side
all those ships that come through toledo
they're not they're not just in ohio
right they're going through
um us waters they're going
uh from state to state many times from
country to country continent to
continent
um maritime suits go to the federal
courthouse which i think is super cool
because i frankly think
any judge who is going to hear a
maritime suit should probably have to
wear
uh a captain's hat like this the entire
time uh maybe we're not gonna go with
the whole british wig
but we darn well ought to go with the
captain's hat if you're gonna hear
maritime lawsuits
okay so the main thing that they hear in
the federal courthouse
is typically bankruptcy cases bankruptcy
is
a federal law okay and bankruptcy allows
you to
clear out your debts and then in return
you go like 10 years where you have
really bad credit
um bankruptcy is a really really useful
thing in a democracy
in any kind of capitalist democratic
society
you need to have something like
bankruptcy law to deal
with situations that are otherwise
unsolvable
um and bankruptcies are the bulk of the
business that u.s district courts do
including in toledo mo they do so many
bankruptcy cases
that they don't do all of them at the
courthouse they do a lot of them in
offices sprinkled around the downtown
area
okay above the district courts district
course are the bottom period
pyramid uh next part of the pyramid is
the u.s courts of appeals now there are
only 13 of these so you had 94 of those
district courts now
you've got 13 courts of appeals that are
sometimes called the circuit courts
and circuit courts basically only hear
appeals from the u.s district courts so
there's
a decision from the u.s district court
somebody doesn't agree with it
they appeal it on a legal basis to the
next level it doesn't go to the supreme
court it goes to these regional courts
of appeals
again all the judges of the courts of
appeals are picked
by presidents of the united states
confirmed by the senate
finally you've got the supreme court at
the top and the supreme court
what do they hear it's a little
complicated um
and we'll get to that later next you've
got legislative courts and there aren't
many of these
there's nothing you get tested on but i
want to talk about them real quick
legislative courts are different from
constitutional courts legislative courts
are
created for really small peculiar weird
individual reasons
so we have securities arbitration court
in the united states
with a judge who hears cases dealing
with
like stock excuse me stocks and bonds
and people have disagreements about them
court of veterans appeals is a
legislative court that exists separate
from
the constitutional court system
territorial courts that hear things from
puerto rico guam um tinian
saipan uh american samoa
they those territorial courts exist
separately from
the rest of the constitutional court
system as well so i just wanted to
mention them real quickly
where did the court's power come from
well this is pretty interesting uh it's
a case
called marbury versus madison and the
madison here is somebody you've heard of
it's james madison
um in 1789 the judiciary act
that george washington signed gave the
supreme court the power
to force the executive branch to comply
with court orders
so it established a bunch of courts it
established procedures for
how many judges there were going to be
in certain places and then it also said
um the supreme court has the power to
force the executive branch to do stuff
that's going to be an important plot
point in just a little bit here
um what happens in the case of marbury
versus madison
that law is the background here's the
case um
john adams got beat like a cheap drum
in the election of 1796.
i'm sorry in the election of 1800 um
and adams wanted revenge okay this is
the first
like two-party election in american
history adams is running against thomas
jefferson adams is a federalist
jefferson is now what we call a
democratic republican
jefferson wants states rights adams is
about
federal power um and jefferson beats
adams and adams is
ticked and there's a whole backstory
between these two dudes
they were thicker than thieves during
the revolution and then they just get
angrier and angrier with each other
while adams is president they spend the
next
couple of decades super angry at each
other
and then they kind of resolve things
just before they die in the 1820s
which is a sweet ending to the story
right so
adam's got beat down by jefferson he
wants revenge part of his revenge
how long do judges serve
exactly right they serve for life so if
you really want to screw the next
president
you load up the court with a bunch of
your judges who believe in your point of
view
is this what president should do
absolutely not
this is absolutely against what we
believe in but
adams does it anyways throws in a bunch
of people who agree with him
are going to advance his point of view
as a big blank you
to tom jefferson now here's the problem
he doesn't actually have the judge's
commissions delivered
the commission is a piece of paper that
basically says
i hereby make you a judge okay
now the judges that the commissions are
left on the desk of the secretary of
state who was
um um uh john marshall
at this point um the
judges don't get their commission
president jefferson takes over
his secretary of state is james madison
madison has all these
commissions sitting on his desk like
he's gonna deliver him and he's like
delivering those they're not judges i
don't have to deliver those
um one of the dudes who's a midnight
judge
uh is by the last name of marbury and i
always want to say it's stephon marbury
the basketball player but it is not
um one of the midnight judges sues the
secretary of state james madison to get
his job
he says i became a judge the minute they
put my name
on that piece of paper i'm a federal
judge um
and the case goes to the supreme court
it's it's a citizen marbury suing the
federal government
goes to the supreme court and the chief
justice of the supreme court at this
point
is none other than the guy who didn't
deliver the commission in the first
place john marshall
so marshall has to hear a case in which
he is
sort of involved so marshall has a big
problem here
if he rules in favor of marbury he's a
homer
and everybody's be like see he just did
this because politics
he just picked the guy who's on his team
um
if he rules in favor of madison
everybody from
his old federalist party you're just a
traitor to the party
you don't care about us at all it it's
almost like he's in a situation where no
matter how he rules in this case he's
going to get in trouble
so marshall we don't call him the
greatest chief justice in history for
nothing folks
um marshall splits the difference he
says
i'm not ruling in favor of anybody i'm
looking back
at that law the 1789 judiciary act
that said the president can be forced to
do things
by the court and he declares that the
judiciary act
itself was unconstitutional um
this decision more or less made
everybody happy marbury wasn't happy i
guarantee you
but more or less marshall's decision in
saying that you just react is
unconstitutional therefore they can't be
judges blah blah blah blah blah
it more or less solves this insoluble
problem
um now what did it also do
the really important thing that marbury
vs madison did it created the power of
the supreme court
nowhere in the constitution you guys
read article 3 with me
nowhere in there does it say the supreme
court gets to decide if things are
constitutional or not
it doesn't say that in there and yet
that's exactly what justice marshall
did he said we get to decide if things
are constitutional or not
we call that judicial review underline
it write it down
put it in big letters judicial review
it's one of the foundations of american
democracy now
that the judicial branch does get to
review the actions as the president does
get to review the
actions of the legislature and decide if
what they're doing is
constitutional it's a big deal article 3
defines the judicial powers marbury
versus madison
really gives it teeth so those are the
two big things to kind of get out of
this
intro to the judiciary thank you guys so
much
for hanging in there with me in our next
video we'll look at judiciary part two
legitimacy of the judicial branch as
always
