Practicing Law Without a License. I get it. Not so though, practicing being a political science professor.
A writ of mandamus was at the center of the Marbury v. Madison case, involving a writ to force Madison who was in newly elected president Jefferson's cabinet to put in office the zillions of conservative judges that Adams had appointed on his last day or so in office so they would block everything Jefferson and his democratic popular movement wanted to accomplish,. Madison saw it as an action attempting to subvert the outcome of the election of 1800, and refused to put the appointees in office..
This case was when the US Supreme Court claimed the right to interpret what was and what wasn't constitutional - a power that is actually not granted it in the Constitution. Mainly it was acting to block Jefferson's democratic policies, which is what the Supreme Court was put in there to do. And what it has mostly been doing ever since.