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Checks and balances means that EVERY branch will overreach from time to time.

Agreed, I did not intend to indict only the Court.

Marshall decided that the power the plaintiff was asking the court to exercise, was a power the court did not have under the Constitution, even if the legislature tried to give that power to the court.

Exactly, and the plaintiff's petition was a gift to Marshall, who determined how it could be used to increase the power of the Court. It is my opinion that it was used in this manner, however, only the members of the Court know for sure, and they ain't talkin'.

LOL. Well, the most often cited phrase in the most often cited case in US jurisprudence is Marshall's "It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is." But that statement is radically misconstrued, to a meaning exactly opposite that which Marshall meant. That statement does not make a power, it cicumscribes a limit on judicial power, as is clear from "reading on."

So if a law be in opposition to the constitution: if both the law and the constitution apply to a particular case, so that the court must either decide that case conformably to the law, disregarding the constitution; or conformably to the constitution, disregarding the law: the court must determine which of these conflicting rules governs the case. This is of the very essence of judicial duty.
If then the courts are to regard the constitution; and he constitution is superior to any ordinary act of the legislature; the constitution, and not such ordinary act, must govern the case to which they both apply.
Those then who controvert the principle that the constitution is to be considered, in court, as a paramount law, are reduced to the necessity of maintaining that courts must close their eyes on the constitution, and see only the law.

And in that expression, the courts are subordinate to BOTH, the law and the Constitution. "To say what the law is" does not mean for the court to make the law. Anybody who has the intellectual honesty to "read on" will come to the same conclusion.

But it is no surprize, in our outcome-based society, that courts too will be outcome-based, and throw principle to the wind.