Then-Professor Scalia read this statement rather differently. They went on to read Marshall’s famous statement that “it is emphatically the province and duty of the Court to say what the law is” as a successful power grab by the Chief Justice that turned the Supreme Court into the final arbiter of constitutional questions. It was the first act of the Court “shaping” the Constitution to fit our needs. This power, the professoriate claimed, was nowhere to be found in the text of the Constitution. At least since the second half of the twentieth century, law professors have taught Marbury as the case where Chief Justice John Marshall, through a clever jiu jitsu move, avoided a confrontation with the president by “discovering” (read “inventing”) a power of the Supreme Court to strike down an act of Congress.
![marbury vs madison marbury vs madison](https://d3208a.medialib.edu.glogster.com/3ndgfJDTweNkUfGb6fhz/thumbnails/3n/3ndgfJDTweNkUfGb6fhz-6k63q6ibr71m30ovr84v5bb/1394886771-source.jpg)
My sharpest memory of the class is how he explained Marbury v. The first course I took from him was Constitutional Law I, which at Chicago was a second-year course focused exclusively on the structural provisions of the Constitution. I first met Justice Antonin Scalia when I was a law student at the University of Chicago, where he was a law professor.
![marbury vs madison marbury vs madison](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0a/74/8e/0a748e56cf0d8144d6684bba9b6321bd.jpg)
She served as a law clerk to Justice Scalia in October Term 1986.
![marbury vs madison marbury vs madison](https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.timetoast.com/public/uploads/photos/6887300/AE492B08-F799-4FAF-84B3-BDFE5B4F2D5B.jpg)
Lee Liberman Otis is Senior Vice President of the Federalist Society and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University Law Center.