"The Great Decision: Jefferson, Adams, Marshall, and the Battle for the Supreme Court" by Cliff Sloan and David McKean (PublicAffairs 2009)

This was the book I brought with me when I went to visit my parents in Arizona during my school's Spring Break.  It is the first time in a long time I have gotten though an entire book in just a week.  It reminded me that I need to read more!

As a lawyer and an legal educator, I am of course familiar with the case of Marbury v. Madison.  However, I really only knew the very basics of the case and its importance in the legal history of the United States.  So I really enjoyed reading more about this obviously important case.



The US Supreme Court

In case you are unaware of this case, it is the landmark case from 1803 that gave the US judiciary the ability to determine whether laws are constitutional or not.  This is something we take for granted today but it was very much an open question early in our country's history.  Very few people at the time anticipated the strong and co-equal judicial branch we have today.  There were a lot of politics involved in the case because the actions being reviewed took place as John Adams was leaving office and Thomas Jefferson was taking Adams' place. Adams made some last minute federal appointments that Jefferson did not want to honor because there was an error in the delivery of the commissions.  The Court had to decide whether the men Adams appointed were entitled to their positions or not. 

I read a lot of historical non-fiction books and sometimes they can have a very academic and thereby dry feeling to them.  Fortunately, this book did not fall into that category.  It was a pretty fast read and it flowed really well in a story-like manner.  I really enjoyed reading it and found it hard to put down when I got into the meat of it.  I learned a lot of new things about the case.  I am going to add this to my list of books that I recommend to my paralegal students if they are interested in legal history.