> That the members of the Convention of 1787 thought the Constitution secured to courts in the United States the right to pass on the validity of acts of Congress under it cannot be reasonably doubted. Confining ourselves simply to the available evidence that is strictly contemporaneous with the framing and ratifying of the Constitution, as I think it only proper to do, we find the following members of the Convention that framed the Constitution definitely asserting that this would be the case: [...]

Basically, of all the convention members who had anything to say on the subject, 17 were clearly in favor. Those 17 comprised "fully three-fourths of the leaders of the Convention, four of the five members of the Committee of Detail which drafted the Constitution, and four of the five members of the Committee of Style which gave the Constitution final form." By contrast, only 3 members expressed a contrary opinion, and only 1 did so plainly--the other 2 basically disfavored any limits on the legislature, including the textually express limits.

The article later describes the evolution of judicial review in England and America, its roots in the Magna Carta and English Common Law, and how it had more firmly taken root in America (i.e. become a general principle of law that needn't restatement--many things were left unstated in the U.S. Constitution), whereas in the mid-to-late 18th century England and continental Europe legal philosophy ended up going in a much different direction as a consequence of political developments that were ultimately foreign to the American experience.

Also, one must note that England is a peculiar case. Parliament (through the House of Lords) was the Supreme Court of the land, and so it didn't necessarily violate the then nascent concept of Parliamentary Supremacy for the House of Lords to void or otherwise interpret a law seemingly in contravention of earlier passed legislation. This is noteworthy to explain how the concept of judicial review could remain consonant on both sides of the Atlantic, despite many modern English swearing up-and-down that judicial review was never accepted in England. Similarly, people like to bring up continental European examples of what a constitutional order would like without judicial review, but fail to mention that Europeans found countless aspects of English law repugnant. Just because those alternatives existed doesn't mean they would have made any sense to the sensibilities of American jurists.

In general I don't think there were many contemporaneous negative reactions to Marshall's assertion of judicial review in Marbury v. Madison; it was basically a non-issue. Almost all the commentary concerned the various other legal conclusions in his opinion (which had unanimous concurrence, FWIW), as well as a bunch of political balking--this occurred during a period of intense dispute between Federalists and Democrats leading to numerous constitutional crises, some of which aren't well known. There were a lot of gymnastics in Marshall's opinion, but they were a consequence of navigating the political environment. Indeed, grounding the opinion in judicial review, precisely because judicial review was relatively uncontroversial, is what gave it the necessary legitimacy to garner acceptance, IMO. To reject judicial review would be to reject separation of powers and the overall constitutional order as generally, if tacitly, understood by most American leaders; rhetoric notwithstanding, few were prepared to actually do that.

It's only in the late 19th and especially 20th centuries when American jurists began to seriously debate judicial review. But of course they were all over a century removed from the constitutional convention, and nearly as removed from Marbury v. Madison itself. Justice Story, who published in 1833 one of the first treatises of the American Constitution, thought judicial review uncontroversial. Story was a state legislator in 1805 and became a Supreme Court justice in 1811. Of all subsequent writers, he was the closet in time to the Marbury opinion and best able to appreciate the legal understanding of that age.

I know it's de rigueur to show how ahistorical modern constitutional law has become. But don't forget that many scholars who wrap themselves in supposed historical legitimacy often commit the same sins.