Thomas Jefferson, Marbury v. Madison e il countermajoritarian dilemma

This essay deals with the countermajoritarian dilemma, examining how the judicial review of legislation developed in the US constitutional experience. Since the beginning, the power of the courts to declare statute laws unconstitutional has been highly debated by legal scholars and in the political arena. Taking into specific account Jefferson’s view on that issue, this essay analyses the roots and the development paths of the decentralised model of constitutional adjudication, dealing with the US Supreme Court’s case law in the nineteenth and twentieth century.