Does the Constitution establish judicial review?

Not explicitly — and that’s the most important thing to understand about judicial review. The word “review” never appears in Article III, and nowhere does the Constitution say in plain terms that federal courts may strike down a law as unconstitutional. Article III does give federal courts jurisdiction over cases “arising under this Constitution,” which implies courts must sometimes interpret what the Constitution requires, but it stops well short of stating that courts get the final word over Congress or the President. The doctrine as we know it was established by the Supreme Court itself, in Marbury v. Madison (1803). Chief Justice John Marshall, ruling on a dispute over a last-minute judicial appointment, reasoned that because the Constitution is “the fundamental and paramount law of the nation,” any legislative act contrary to it must be void, and that “it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” On that logic, the Court struck down part of the Judiciary Act of 1789 — the first time it invalidated an act of Congress. Legal historians note this wasn’t invented from nothing: the Court had already weighed constitutional challenges to federal and state laws in a handful of earlier cases, and many scholars have long found Marshall’s textual argument for the power thinner than the sweeping precedent it created. But it was Marbury that turned the practice into settled doctrine, making judicial review a structural feature of American government even though you won’t find the words that create it anywhere in the document itself. This is an explanation for general understanding, not legal advice.