Judicial Review

     Yesterday was an important anniversary.  I'd never heard of it.

     Hylton v. United States was argued before the U. S. Supreme Court on February 23, 1796.  The Court decided it on March 8 of that year.

     The particulars of the case are unremarkable.  Congress passed a law that levied a yearly tax on carriages.  The law was challenged on the basis of being a direct tax and therefore Constitutionally prohibited.  The Court disagreed, in a ruling that stood until 1895.

     But it set up the notion that the Supreme Court could review the Constitutionality of laws passed by Congress and by implication, the Constitutionality of official acts of the Federal government, paving the way for Marbury v. Madison in 1803, the first time the Court threw out a law on such a basis.