Important Supreme Court Decisions
Order by
25 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Marbury v. Madison | The court established its role as the arbiter of the constitutionality of federal laws, the principle is known as judicial review (see also Federalist Papers, 78). |
| Fletcher v. Peck | The decision stems from the Yazoo land cases, 1803, and upholds the sanctity of contracts. |
| McCulloch v. Maryland | The Court ruled that states cannot tax the federal government, i.e. the Bank of the United States; the phrase "the power to tax is the power to destroy"; confirmed the constitutionality of the Bank of the United States. |
| Dartmouth College v. Woodward | New Hampshire had attempted to take over Dartmouth College by revising its colonial charter. The Court ruled that the charter was protected under the contract clause of the U. S. Constitution; upholds the sanctity of contracts. |
| Gibbons v. Ogden | Clarified the commerce clause and affirmed Congressional power over interstate commerce. |
| Scott v. Sanford | Speaking for a widely divided court, Chief Justice Taney ruled that Dred Scott was not a citizen and had no standing in court; Scott's residence in a free state and territory had not made him free since he returned to Missouri; Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in a territory (based on the 5th Amendment right of a person to be secure from seizure of property), thus voiding the Missouri Compromise of 1820. |
| Plessy v. Ferguson | Legalized segregation in publicly owned facilities on the basis of "separate but equal." |
| Schenck v. U. S. | Unanimously upheld the Espionage Act of 1917 which declared that people who interfered with the war effort were subject to imprisonment; declared that the 1st Amendment right to freedom of speech was not absolute; free speech could be limited if its exercise presented a "clear and present danger." |
| Schechter v. U. S. | Sometimes called "the sick chicken case." Unanimously declared the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) unconstitutional on three grounds: that the act delegated legislative power to the executive; that there was a lack of constitutional authority for such legislation; and that it sought to regulate businesses that were wholly intrastate in character. |
| Brown v. Board of Education | Unanimous decision declaring "separate but equal" unconstitutional. |
| Gideon v. Wainwright | Extends to the defendant the right of counsel in all state and federal criminal trials regardless of their ability to pay. |
| Escobedo v. Illinois | Ruled that a defendant must be allowed access to a lawyer before questioning by police. |
| Miranda v. Arizona | The court ruled that those subjected to in-custody interrogation be advised of their constitutional right to an attorney and their right to remain silent. |
| Roe v. Wade | The court legalized abortion by ruling that state laws could not restrict it during the first three months of pregnancy. |
| U. S. v. Richard Nixon | The court rejected Richard Nixon's claim to an absolutely unqualified privilege against any judicial process. |
| Bakke v. Regents of the University of California | Ambiguous ruling by a badly divided court that dealt with affirmative action programs that used race as a basis of selecting participants. The court general upheld affirmative action, but with a 4/4/1 split, it was a very weak decision. |
| Gitlow v. New York | was a historically important case argued before the United States Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution had extended the reach of certain provisions of the First Amendment—specifically the provisions protecting freedom of speech and freedom of the press—to the governments of the individual states. |
| Engel v. Vitale | was a landmark United States Supreme Court case that determined that it is unconstitutional for state officials to compose an official school prayer and require its recitation in public schools. |
| Abington Township School District v. Schempp | declared school sponsored Bible reading in public schools in the United States to be unconstitutional. |
| West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette | was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that held that the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution protected students from being forced to salute the American flag and say the Pledge of Allegiance in school. |
| Near v. Minnesota | decision that recognized the freedom of the press from prior restraints on publication, a principle that was applied to free speech generally in subsequent jurisprudence. |
| New York Times v. The United States | The ruling made it possible for the New York Times and Washington Post newspapers to publish the then-classified Pentagon Papers without risk of government censure. |
| Tinker v. Des Moines School District | protected freedom of speech when three students were suspended from school for passively wearing black armbands to school protesting the vietnam war |
| Mapp v. Ohio | was a landmark case in criminal procedure, in which the United States Supreme Court decided that evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against "unreasonable searches and seizures", may not be used in criminal prosecutions in state courts, as well as federal courts. |
| Korematsu v. the United states | ruled that imprisonment of japanese americans was constitutional |
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