Marbury v Madison is the most consequential legal decision in our nation’s history because it established the concept of judicial review in the United States. This principal grants to the judiciary the responsibility to review laws for their constitutionality and gives it the power to void legislation it finds repugnant to the Constitution. That decision was rendered by John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1803, but the road to that decision extends further back.

John Marshall's active service in the Continental Army ended in December 1779, although he did not officially retire from the military until February 1781. Marshall went home to Virginia to await his next command, anxious to get back into the fight, but that call never came as the war in the north wound down.

In early December 1775, Major Thomas Marshall and his son, Lieutenant John Marshall, and the rest of the Culpepper Minutemen were ordered to join Colonel William Woodford at Great Bridge, a small village nine miles south of Norfolk. Here, in the first fight of the American Revolution in Virginia, the young Lieutenant from the frontier would get his initial taste of battle.