Legal judgment and cultural motivation: Enthymematic form in Marbury v. Madison

Historians and critics have long assessed the political import of Marbury v. Madison, an 1803 Supreme Court decision that declared part of a Congressional act unconstitutional. Critics explain the decision as part of an evolution in constitutional law and as a lively political drama. This essay identifies inferences by which the written opinion poses judgments about the function of law. The opinion delimits law to decisions about personal rights; it radicalizes its field of concern by reversing its argumentative momentum; it develops a progression of dichotomies that ask readers to stand in for the viability of a contractual political order. These ways of constructing the issue ask readers to affirm a formative myth of national identity.