The Portuguese were the first colonialists to establish sugar cane plantations on islands off the coast of Africa. The first cane plantations were established on the islands of Madiera and Sao Tomes. Sao Tomes was known as the largest sugar cane producer in the world and its economy grew to be one of the largest in the world
. Because sugar cane farming was and still is, a labor-intensive process, the Portuguese began importing large numbers of African slaves to the island of Sao Tomes.<span>
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It did not establish judicial review. Judicial review had been used in state courts and lower federal courts prior to Marbury, and ruled a number of times that some laws were unconstitutional. In fact, even the Supreme Court used judicial review before Marbury to decide that a carriage tax was constitutional (Hylton v. United States).
However, Marbury was the first case that the Supreme Court used to rule a law unconstitutional. They declared that a part of the Judiciary Act of 1789 which gave the US Supreme Court court original jurisdiction over writs of mandamus. The Court ruled that Congress does not have the authority to modify the Supreme Court's original jurisdiction, therefore, it was unconstitutional.
<span>In a way, by doing so, the Supreme Court actually took away some of it's power that Congress had granted it because the Constitution did not grant Congress that power.</span>
<span>he Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed each territory to decide the issue of slavery on the basis of popular sovereignty. Kansas with slavery would violate the Missouri Compromise, which had kept the Union from falling apart for the last thirty-four years. The long-standing compromise would have to be repealed. Opposition was intense, but ultimately the bill passed in May of 1854. Territory north of the sacred 36°30' line was now open to popular sovereignty. The North was outraged.The political effects of Douglas' bill were enormous. Passage of the bill irrevocably split the Whig Party, one of the two major political parties in the country at the time. Every northern Whig had opposed the bill; almost every southern Whig voted for it. With the emotional issue of slavery involved, there was no way a common ground could be found. Most of the southern Whigs soon were swept into the Democratic Party. Northern Whigs reorganized themselves with other non-slavery interests to become the REPUBLICAN PARTY, the party of Abraham Lincoln. This left the Democratic Party as the sole remaining institution that crossed sectional lines. Animosity between the North and South was again on the rise. The North felt that if the Compromise of 1820 was ignored, the Compromise of 1850 could be ignored as well. Violations of the hated Fugitive Slave Law increased. Trouble was indeed back with a vengeance.</span>
