In the United States, judicial review is the ability of a court to examine and decide whether a law, treaty or administrative regulation contradicts or violates the provisions of current law, a State Constitution or, finally, the Constitution of the United States. While the Constitution of the United States does not explicitly define a power of judicial review, the authority for judicial review in the United States has been deduced from the structure, provisions and history of the Constitution. [1]
Two historic decisions of the United States Supreme Court served to confirm the inferred constitutional authority for judicial review in the United States: in 1796, Hylton v. United States was the first case decided by the Supreme Court that involves a direct challenge to the Constitutionality of a congressional law, the Transportation Act of 1794 that imposed a "transportation tax." [2] The Court got involved in the judicial review process by examining the plaintiff's claim that the transportation tax was unconstitutional. . After the review, the Supreme Court decided that the Transportation Law was constitutional. In 1803, Marbury v. Madison [3] was the first case of the Supreme Court where the Court affirmed its authority for judicial review to annul a law as unconstitutional. At the end of his opinion in this decision, [4] the president of the Supreme Court, John Marshall, held that the responsibility of the Supreme Court to revoke unconstitutional legislation was a necessary consequence of his oath of office to defend the Constitution as indicated in Article Six of the Constitution.
Until 2014, the United States Supreme Court has declared 176 laws of the United States Congress unconstitutional.
