<P> Several other cases involving judicial review issues reached the Supreme Court before the issue was definitively decided in Marbury in 1803 . </P> <P> In Hayburn's Case, 2 U.S. (2 Dall .) 408 (1792), federal circuit courts held an act of Congress unconstitutional for the first time . Three federal circuit courts found that Congress had violated the Constitution by passing an act requiring circuit court judges to decide pension applications, subject to the review of the Secretary of War . These circuit courts found that this was not a proper judicial function under Article III . These three decisions were appealed to the Supreme Court, but the appeals became moot when Congress repealed the statute while the appeals were pending . </P> <P> In an unreported Supreme Court decision in 1794, United States v. Yale Todd, the Supreme Court reversed a pension that was awarded under the same pension act that had been at issue in Hayburn's Case . The Court apparently decided that the act designating judges to decide pensions was not constitutional because this was not a proper judicial function . This apparently was the first Supreme Court case to find an act of Congress unconstitutional . However, there was not an official report of the case and it was not used as a precedent . </P> <P> Hylton v. United States, 3 U.S. (3 Dall .) 171 (1796), was the first case decided by the Supreme Court that involved a challenge to the constitutionality of an act of Congress . It was argued that a federal tax on carriages violated the constitutional provision regarding "direct" taxes . The Supreme Court upheld the tax, finding it was constitutional . Although the Supreme Court did not strike down the act in question, the Court engaged in the process of judicial review by considering the constitutionality of the tax . The case was widely publicized at the time, and observers understood that the Court was testing the constitutionality of an act of Congress . Because it found the statute valid, the Court did not have to assert that it had the power to declare a statute unconstitutional . </P>

When was the last time judicial review was used