Supreme Court Case Analysis

Justices of the United States Supreme Court are strategic actors who strive to secure policy outcomes as close to their preferred outcome as possible. Accomplishing this sometimes requires justices to not always pursue their true policy preferences and sometimes it requires justices to ignore legal and policy questions. In this essay, I will analyze how justices were strategic in a few landmark supreme court cases.
The supreme court case Marbury v. Madison is a perfect example of justices being strategic, even as far back in history as 1803. The case originated as a consequence of the political turbulence that resulted from the transition between the Federalist and Democratic-Republican parties following the Presidential election in 1800.
Chief Justice John Marshall was put in an interesting situation, as he was now responsible for overseeing Marbury’s petition to the court regarding those same commissions. Chief Justice Marshall decided that Marbury did have the right to the writ for which he had petitioned and that the laws of the United States allowed the courts to grant Marbury this writ. Marshall however ordered that the writ could not be granted because Section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 which granted the court the power to order such a writ was unconstitutional. Chief Justice Marshall exhibited how Congress had overstepped its authority in Section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789, and used the opportunity to declare the Supreme Court’s responsibility to uphold the constitution.
Chief Justice Marshall had wanted Marbury to be commissioned, and Marshall legally could have granted Marbury a writ that ensured his commission. Instead, Marshall chose to be strategic and ultimately give himself and the Supreme Court the important power of judicial review. This introduction of judicial review initiated the gradual ascendance to being an equal branch of government alongside Congress and the Executive branch. In this case Chief Justice Marshall strategically abandoned his preference of having Marbury commissioned as this
It was discovered through letters between Justice Brennan and Justice Marshall that Brennan’s opinion had been a strategic judgment. The letter from Brennan to Marshall is analyzed in the book "Crafting Law on the Supreme Court,” written by Forrest Maltzman, James Spriggs, and Paul Wahlbeck. Maltzman, Spriggs, and Wahlbeck write,
Justice Brennan informed Marshall that although "everyone except you and me would recognize the existence of an exception to Miranda for 'routine booking questions,'... I made the strategic judgment to consider the existence of an exception but to use my control over the opinion to define the exception as narrowly as possible" (Brennan 1990a). In this letter, Brennan admitted that even though he personally opposed his newly created exception to Miranda, he voted with the majority to control the breadth of the legal rule being developed in the