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Finally, Article III deals with the judicial powers of the United States. It states that the judicial powers shall be vested in one supreme court, and in such inferior courts as Congress may establish. This becomes a check of Congress of the judicial branch. Judges are to serve as long as they are considered to be in good behavior and that too is to be monitored by the other branches. In addition the income of judicial employees is to be determined by congress.

It seems as if the legislative branch has more power over all the other branches. That is the way it was intended to be. However, in application the judicial branch, which was intended to be the weakest branch, has become surprisingly more powerful over the years. Judicial Review has been the mechanism which has enabled the judiciary to rise in power and in turn check the other two branches more than the reciprocal.

Judicial Review is a distinctive power associated with the Supreme Court that is not specifically mentioned in the Constitution. Chief Justice John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison asserted the major principle on which judicial review rests by saying that, [i]t is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. Through judicial review the Court most dramatically asserts its authority to determine what the Constitution means. This power to interpret the law becomes the determining factor in the most powerful branch of government. The argument against the ability to exercise judicial review is that it gives judges the power to legislate. If the court believes that a law is fundamentally unconstitutional it can rule so thus overturning legislation. Many argue that the court was never intended to have this kind of power and that it interferes with the will of the people to decide what is right and wrong through legislation. This is when the court moves out of the black and white area and into the gray. On the other hand, congress still retains the power to override a Supreme Court decision by passing an amendment, but has only done so in four instances.

America s institution of judicial review gives the court enormous supervisory power over the other branches of government. It permits the court to define whatever powers of self-defense the other branches have against the judiciary. Therefore, overtime the Supreme Court has acquired, in a way, the jurisdiction to regulate the separation of powers as they see fit.

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