It was, perhaps, these practices of private communication between the President and the judges that led very soon to another interesting matter,--a formal request by the President, in 1793, for an opinion from the judges on twenty-nine questions relating to the treaties with France. This request accorded with a colonial practice of asking such opinions from judges; a usage centuries old in England, and preserved to-day in the constitutions of a few States in this country. The judges, however, declined answering these questions, “considering themselves,” says Marshall, in his “Life of Washington,” “merely as constituting a legal tribunal for the decision of controversies brought before them in legal form.”[29] Although this seems to have been obviously the right course, since the proposition to give power to put questions to the judges in this way had been considered in the Federal Convention and not allowed, yet we may remark how convenient such a power would often have proved. If it be admitted, as it always has been in England, and is, almost universally, here, that such opinions are merely learned advice and bind nobody, not even the judges, they would often afford the executive and Congress much needed and early help upon constitutional questions in serious emergencies; such, for example, as have lately presented themselves in our own history. After this, there was an occasional allusion in the opinions of the Supreme Court to the question of the power of that court to pass on the constitutionality of Federal enactments as being an undecided and more or less doubtful question. But not until 1803, early in Marshall’s time, was the point judicially presented to the Supreme Court. It came up in the case of Marbury _v._ Madison,[30] the first case at the third term after any opinions of Marshall were reported. In that case, an act of Congress was declared unconstitutional. It was more than half a century before that happened again. Marbury _v._ Madison was a remarkable case. It was connected intimately with certain executive action for which Marshall as Secretary of State was partly responsible. For various reasons the case must have excited peculiar interest in his mind. Within three weeks before the end of Adams’s administration, on February 13, 1801, while Marshall was both Chief Justice and Secretary of State,[31] an act of Congress had abolished the old system of circuit and district courts, and established a new one. This gave to the President, Adams, the appointment of many new judges, and kept him and his secretary busy, during the last hours of the administration, in choosing and commissioning the new officials.