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 interpretation of the Constitution is supreme over the other branches.” The boundaries between the two concepts, and the Court’s claim on each, have been the subject of debate since the founding era.

One week after the Court handed down its ruling in Marbury, it decided another case that also carried important consequences for the role of the judiciary in the constitutional system. That case, Stuart v. Laird, required the Court to rule on the constitutionality of the Jeffersonian Congress’s 1802 repeal of the Judiciary Act of 1801. The questions presented asked, first, whether Congress could validly abolish the circuit courts created under the 1801 Act without violating Article III of the Constitution, which stated that federal judges were to hold their offices “during good Behaviour,” and second, whether the Justices could be required to sit as circuit judges. The Court upheld the constitutionality of the 1802 Act, found that the reorganization of the inferior federal courts was within Congress’s power, and held that the validity of circuit riding had been settled by “practice and acquiescence.”

Some commentators have characterized Stuart as a more overtly political—and perhaps more consequential—decision than Marbury. Stuart forced the Court to confront existential questions about the balance between judicial independence and congressional control of the courts. One scholar has argued that “Marshall and his brethren apparently calculated that to invalidate this statute was to guarantee Jeffersonian political retaliation against the Court,” while another called the Stuart decision “an exercise in self-preservation.” Chief Justice Marshall himself seems to have remained skeptical about the basis of the decision, referring in an 1823 letter, in ironic tones, to “the memorable distinction as to tenure of office, between removing the Judge from the office, and removing the office from the Judge.”

As the Marbury and Stuart decisions demonstrate, the Court was at the center of negotiations about both law and politics during the early nineteenth century. Through its substantive decisions, the Court established its power even as it showed itself attentive to political context. As the Court gained stature under Chief Justice Marshall’s leadership, structural reforms to the judiciary continued to be a perpetual topic of discussion. In 1807, Congress both increased the size of the Court to seven Justices and added a seventh circuit comprising Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The size of the Court and the number of circuits were still understood as necessarily linked. Other changes to the Court’s jurisdiction were periodically proposed. These included stripping the Court of its power under Section 25 of the 1789 Judiciary Act to hear appeals from state courts, an effort that was linked to specific policy issues, including treaty enforcement, land sales, bank regulation, and internal improvements.