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While the Constitution was going through the ratification process in 1788, Alexander Hamilton confidently predicted that the judiciary would be "the least dangerous" branch of the new Government, since judges would not have the power of the purse or of the sword. Indeed, the first Chief Justice of the United States, John Jay, who resigned to be Governor of New York, refused President John Adams' invitation to return, saying that the court lacked "weight and dignity." It was the fourth Chief Justice, John Marshall, who gave the federal bench real clout. Marshall, who believed that a judge should be responsible not to Congress or the President but only to "God and his own conscience," declared in Marbury vs. Madison (1803) that the judiciary had the right, indeed the duty, to strike down acts of Congress that conflicted with the Constitution. This right of judicial review had support from Federalists like the complacent Hamilton, but it is far from explicit in the Constitution.
The Supreme Court did not use the power Marbury gave it for 54 years. When it did, with the Dred Scott decision of 1857, which struck down the Missouri Compromise and declared slaves to be property with no rights as citizens, it helped start the Civil War. During Reconstruction, the Constitution was amended to ensure that blacks were treated equally: no state, said the majestically vague 14th Amendment, shall deprive persons of "equal protection" or "due process" under the law.
Judges eventually found in the 14th their greatest tool of judicial review, but not for the reasons intended by the amendment's drafters. At the beginning of the 20th century, the 14th was used principally to protect property, not the disadvantaged. The court protected business from government regulation, thwarted unionization and struck down minimum-wage and maximum-hour laws. That trend began to fade only in the late 1930s, after F.D.R. threatened to "pack" the court with liberals to get his New Deal through.
By the '50s and the coming of the Warren Court, the roles were reversed. It was legislatures that were resisting reform, and the court that was pushing social change. The landmark of that era was Brown vs. Board of Education (1954), which established that separate was not equal in public schools. The 14th acquired new meaning; judges became guardians of the poor and forgotten. The criminally accused were guaranteed the right to free counsel when indigent, the right to a jury in a felony case, and, with Miranda (1966), the right to be told of their rights before confessing. Free-speech guarantees were widely extended; in the 1960s, electoral districts were reapportioned to ensure one-man, one-vote.