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The judicial power of declaring laws unconstitutional is sometimes spoken of as if it were a peculiar power specially conferred upon the U.S. Supreme Court. On the contrary, it is a natural and necessary incident of the ordinary judicial function of deciding cases, as this must operate under a system which involves two sorts of laws, the one (called constitutions) superior to the other (called statutes). In case of conflict between the two in any case brought before a judge, he must decide in accordance with the former. This was pointed out as long ago as 1787, by James Iredell. Similarly, in the colonial period, in the case of chartered colonies, the Privy Council acting on appeals, or the colonial courts themselves, might set aside a colonial statute as repugnant to the charter. Soon after the enacting of the first written constitutions in America, courts began to exercise this function with respect to those constitutions. The first such case observed is the New Jersey case of Holmes vs. Walton, in 1779. In Commonwealth vs. Caton, in Virginia, in 1782, there was an approach to this. Similar cases followed in Rhode Island (Trevett vs. Weeden, 1786) and in North Carolina (Bayard vs. Singleton, 1787). The first case in which the U.S. Supreme Court set aside a Federal statute as contrary to the Constitution was that of United States vs. Yale Todd, (1794), but the first famous one was that of Marbury vs. Madison (1803.) The first case in which it set aside a State law was that of United States vs. Peters, (1809). For particulars, see these cases. History by Coxe.