Everybody “knows” that the Courts have the power to declare any law passed by Congress “unconstitutional,” but where did that power come from? The Constitution itself is silent on the matter, and several founding fathers, including Jefferson, argued that this power resided in the Legislative Branch, rather than the Judiciary. That question remained unanswered for the first 15 years of the new Republic until Justice John Marshall’s opinion in the 1803 case of Marbury v. Madison, which established