In the lower courts alone can
the relief prayed for be obtained.
Of all the events of Marshall's life this controversy with Jefferson
seems to me the most equivocal, and it was a direct effect of a
constitutional system which has permitted the courts to become the
censor of the political departments of the government. Marshall,
probably, felt exasperated by Jefferson's virulence against these final
appointments made by John Adams, while Marshall was Secretary of State,
and for which he may have felt himself, in part, responsible. Possibly,
even, he may have taken some of Jefferson's strictures as aimed at
himself. At all events he went to extreme lengths in retaliation. He
might have dismissed the litigation in a few words by stating that,
whatever the abstract rights of the parties might have been, the Supreme
Court had no power to constrain the President in his official functions;
but he yielded to political animosity. Then, having taken a position
practically untenable, he had to find an avenue of retreat, and he found
it by asserting a supervisory jurisdiction over Congress, a step which,
even at that early period, was most hazardous.
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