Few Supreme Court decisions are as well known or loom as large in our nation's history as Marbury v. Madison. The 1803 decision is widely viewed as having established the doctrine of judicial review, which permits the Court to overturn acts of Congress that violate the Constitution; moreover, such judicial decisions are final, not subject to further appeal.

Robert Clinton contends that few decisions have been more misunderstood, or misused, in the debates over judicial review. He argues that the accepted view of Marbury is ahistorical and emerges from nearly a century of...