Joseph Lane: Roland Burris and the U.S. Senate: A Replay of Marbury v. Madison?
The “Is Roland Burris a Senator?” game has just taken a shocking turn toward the past. When turned away from the Senate chamber, the reasons given were that “his credentials were not in order” because his appointment by the Governor of Illinois had not been certified, as required by law, by the Secretary of State of Illinois.
This is not the first time that we have faced a major controversy based on the obscure legal question about whether or not Secretaries of State, when charged by law with certifying and delivering state appointments, have some discretion, perhaps even some constitutional duty, to intercept and prevent improper or questionable appointments to offices of public trust. We may be facing the most improbable of replays because this case is now looking like Marbury v. Madison all over again.
Quite possibly the most famous but least understood of the great Supreme Court precedents, Marbury (1803) is widely believed to be the case that “created,” or at least “recognized,” the existence of judicial review in the U.S. constitutional system. However, many people don’t realize that Chief Justice John Marshall’s decision in Marbury marked, at least in the first instance, how weak the courts were when faced with direct conflicts of authority between themselves and the executive or legislative branches. In the incipient Burris case, it is not clear that the courts could exercise any more power now than Marshall’s court did then.
Let’s look at the facts of the earlier case in a very short form: William Marbury was appointed Justice of the Peace for the District of Columbia in the waning hours of the John Adams administration, one of many judicial officers who were appointed by the outgoing president and confirmed by the lame duck Senate in the panicked rush that preceded the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson as President. His appointment appeared to be clear of all of the constitutional hurdles, but federal law at the time required that commissions like Marbury’s be stamped with the Great Seal and then delivered by the Secretary of State. The outgoing Secretary of State - and incoming Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court - John Marshall did not have the time to perform this duty, and the new Secretary of State - James Madison - declined to do so on the argument that the appointment of these “midnight judges,” while perhaps technically legal, was certainly suspect. An outgoing administration, defeated at the polls and facing minority status in both houses of Congress as well as the loss of the presidency, seizes power in the judiciary by clever shenanigans.
Who could approve?
Madison’s disapproval of the Adams appointments is not at all unlike the widespread disgust now expressed about a presumptive felon and soon to be ex-governor making such an appointment to the Senate on behalf of all the people of Illinois.
Nobody claimed that Marbury did anything improper, but it was widely believed that those who created his position and appointed him to it did. Like Burris, he was deprived of a choice position on account of the presumed improprieties of those who appointed him. Marbury sued, as Burris presumably will, claiming that even though there were (and are) laws requiring action by the Secretary of State to complete official appointments, those laws do not allow any discretion for the Secretary of State(s). They are clear commands that the Secretary of State must take action to complete the appointments and a Secretary of State who fails to do so, does not prevent the appointment but only violates his own public duty. Marbury sued in the U.S. Supreme Court for a writ of mandamus, an order to act, that would force Madison to complete the sealing and delivery of his commission.
The Supreme Court accepted most of Marbury’s reasoning but ultimately (and this is what college freshmen often get wrong about the case) denied that it had the power to intervene in the dispute. Overturning a congressional law that (arguably) gave the Supreme Court the power to issue writs just like the one requested, John Marshall declared that yes, Marbury had a right to the office, and yes, Marbury was entitled to the commission, but no, the Court could not issue a mandamus to make Madison act. The Court’s decision seemed to concede that the judiciary could not make the executive branch deliver what it would not deliver. Thus, while laying the groundwork for the great power of judicial review, the case actually ended in the Court’s admission of its own weakness.
Now we return to Mr. Burris’s plight.
Perhaps he is correct that the Illinois Secretary of State cannot choose to withhold certification. Legally, there may be no discretion involved in the Secretary of State’s act, and perhaps, Burris has every legal right to the office of Senator. But let’s assume for a moment that the Senate majority is unmoved by these arguments, that they stand by the judgment that Burris’s appointment was “tainted” or improper, and that it is now incomplete. They can refuse to seat Burris, and even though Burris will sue, it is an open question whether the Court can now do what it could not do in 1803 - Can it force one of the other branches of the federal government to accept the judiciary’s judgment about who is properly appointed to an office under the other branch’s direct control?
Here, I have to say (the oft-cited but equally misunderstood Powell v. McCormack notwithstanding), Burris may face a fate not unlike Marbury’s. If the Senate relents and allows him to be seated, and there are some signs they may now plan to do so, all may yet end well for Roland Burris. But if the Senate leadership is really willing to stand by the judgment that the Illinois Secretary of State has effectively enjoined Burris’s appointment (much as Madison did Marbury’s), we may be reminded that for all of the judiciary’s apparent strength, the courts may not be any stronger in this regard than they were in 1803.
In 1803, rather than risk looking impotent when Madison simply ignored a mandamus directed to him, the Court found a way not to order anything that it could not enforce, and I suspect that faced with similar intransigence, should we make it that far, we may see this history repeated. I think that rather than watching the Senate ignore a court order that Mr. Burris be seated, courts might just decide that there is some good reason not to decide this case, or at least not to decide it quickly and to hope that another resolution saves them from ever having to do so.
I cannot say whether Marbury’s loss was tragedy, but we may safely say that this time, it is looking more and more like a farce.