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Supreme Court Cases

Terms in this set (25)

McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)
The state of Maryland enacted a tax that would force the United States Bank in Maryland to pay taxes to the state. McCulloch, a cashier for the Baltimore, Maryland Bank, was sued for not complying with the Maryland state tax. This Supreme Court decision establishes the Constitution as the supreme law of the land, taking precedent over any state law incongruent with it.
Gibbons v. Ogden (1824)
Gibbons v. Ogden, (1824) was a landmark decision in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the power to regulate interstate commerce was granted to Congress by the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution. The case was argued by some of America's most admired and capable attorneys at the time. Exiled Irish patriot Thomas Addis Emmet and Thomas J. Oakley argued for Ogden, while William Wirt and Daniel Webster argued for Gibbons. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Gibbons. The sole argued source of Congress's power to promulgate the law at issue was the Commerce Clause.
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in the jurisprudence of the United States, upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities under the doctrine of "separate but equal. The decision was handed down by a vote of 7 to 1 with the majority opinion written by Justice Henry Billings Brown and the dissent written by Justice John Marshall Harlan. Louisiana Justice Edward Douglass White was one of the majority: he was a member of the New Orleans Pickwick Club and the Crescent City White League, the latter a paramilitary organization that had supported white supremacy with violence through the 1870s to suppress black voting and regain political power by white Democrats.
Gitlow v. New York (1925)
Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court decided on June 8, 1925, which ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution had extended the reach of certain limitations on federal government authority set forth in the First Amendment—specifically the provisions protecting freedom of speech and freedom of the press—to the governments of the individual states. It was one of a series of Supreme Court cases that defined the scope of the First Amendment's protection of free speech and established the standard to which a state or the federal government would be held when it criminalized speech or writing.
Korematsu v. United States (1944)
Korematsu v. United States,(1944), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case concerning the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066, which ordered Japanese Americans into internment camps during World War II regardless of citizenship.
Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka (1954)
Brown v. Board of Education, (1954), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896, which allowed state-sponsored segregation, insofar as it applied to public education. Handed down on May 17, 1954, the Warren Court's unanimous (9-0) decision stated that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." As a result, de jure racial segregation was ruled a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. This ruling paved the way for integration and was a major victory of the civil rights movement.
Mapp v. Ohio (1961)
Mapp v. Ohio, (1961), 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 state law criminal prosecutions in state courts, as well, as had previously been the law, as in federal criminal law prosecutions in federal courts. The Supreme Court accomplished this by use of a principle known as selective incorporation; in this case this involved the incorporation of the provisions, as construed by the Court, of the Fourth Amendment which are literally applicable only to actions of the federal government into the Fourteenth Amendment due process clause which is literally applicable to actions of the states.
Engle v. Vitale (1962)
Engel v. Vitale, (1962), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case that ruled it is unconstitutional for state officials to compose an official school prayer and encourage its recitation in public schools. In an opinion delivered by Justice Hugo Black, the Court ruled that government-written prayers were not to be recited in public schools and were an unconstitutional violation of the Establishment Clause. This was decided in a vote of 6-1, because before the decision could be announced, Justice Felix Frankfurter suffered a cerebral stroke that forced him to retire, and Justice Byron White took no part in the case
Gideon v. Wainwright (1963)
Gideon v. Wainwright, (1963), is a landmark case in United States Supreme Court history. In it the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that state courts are required under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to provide counsel in criminal cases to represent defendants who are unable to afford to pay their own attorneys. The case extended the identical requirement that had been explicitly imposed on federal courts under the Fifth Amendment and Sixth Amendment.
Miranda V Arizona (1966)
Miranda v. Arizona, (1966), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court which passed 5-4. The Court held that both inculpatory and exculpatory statements made in response to interrogation by a defendant in police custody will be admissible at trial only if the prosecution can show that the defendant was informed of the right to consult with an attorney before and during questioning and of the right against self-incrimination prior to questioning by police, and that the defendant not only understood these rights, but voluntarily waived them.
Tinker v. Des Moines (1969)
Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, (1969) was a decision by the United States Supreme Court that defined the constitutional rights of students in U.S. public schools. The Tinker test is still used by courts today to determine whether a school's disciplinary actions violate students' First Amendment rights.
Lemon v. Kurtzman (1973)
Lemon v. Kurtzman, (1971), was a case argued before the Supreme Court of the United States. The court ruled unanimously in an 8-0 decision that Pennsylvania's Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Act (represented through David Kurtzman) from 1968 transgressed the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The act allowed the Superintendent of Public Schools to reimburse private schools (mostly Catholic) for the salaries of teachers who taught in these private schools, from public textbooks and with public instructional materials. The decision also upheld a decision of the First Circuit, which had struck down the Rhode Island Salary Supplement Act providing state funds to supplement salaries at private elementary schools by 15%. As in Pennsylvania, most of these funds were spent on Catholic schools.
Roe v. Wade (1973)
Roe v. Wade, (1973), is a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court on the issue of abortion. Decided simultaneously with a companion case, Doe v. Bolton, the Court ruled 7-2 that a right to privacy under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment extended to a woman's decision to have an abortion, but that this right must be balanced against the state's two legitimate interests in regulating abortions: protecting prenatal life and protecting women's health. Arguing that these state interests became stronger over the course of a pregnancy, the Court resolved this balancing test by tying state regulation of abortion to the third trimester of pregnancy.
US v. Nixon(1974)
United States v. Nixon, (1974), was a landmark United States Supreme Court decision. It resulted in a unanimous 8-0 ruling against President Richard Nixon and was important to the late stages of the Watergate scandal. It is considered a crucial precedent limiting the power of any US president.
Buckley v. Valeo (1976)
Buckley v. Valeo, (1976), was a case in which a majority of the Supreme Court of the United States struck down several provisions in the 1974 Amendment to the Federal Election Campaign Act, a law that limited campaign expenditures, independent expenditures by individuals and groups, and expenditures by a candidate from personal funds. It introduced the idea that money counts as speech, and eliminated any previous restraints on unlimited spending in US election campaigns. The Court upheld the provision which sets limits on individuals' campaign contributions.
Gregg v. Georgia (1976)
Gregg v. Georgia, (1976), reaffirmed the United States Supreme Court's acceptance of the use of the death penalty in the United States, upholding, in particular, the death sentence imposed on Troy Leon Gregg. Referred to by a leading scholar as the July 2 Cases and elsewhere referred to by the lead case Gregg, the Supreme Court set forth the two main features that capital sentencing procedures must employ in order to comply with the Eighth Amendment ban on "cruel and unusual punishments." The decision essentially ended the de facto moratorium on the death penalty imposed by the Court in its 1972 decision in Furman v. Georgia (1972).
Regents of California v. Bakke (1978)
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, (1978) was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States. It upheld affirmative action, allowing race to be one of several factors in college admission policy. However, the court ruled that specific quotas, such as the 16 out of 100 seats set aside for minority students by the University of California, Davis School of Medicine, were impermissible.
Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier (1988)
Hazelwood School District v Kuhlmeier , (1988) was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States which held that public school curricular student newspapers that have not been established as forums for student expression are subject to a lower level of First Amendment protection than independent student expression or newspapers established (by policy or practice) as forums for student expression. The case was found in favor of Hazelwood School District, overruling a Court of Appeals reversal of a District Court ruling. There were five votes for Hazelwood, and three against. The majority of the justices believed that the censorship did not violate the student's First Amendment rights of free speech.
Texas v. Johnson (1989)
Texas v. Johnson, (1989), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that invalidated prohibitions on desecrating the American flag enforced in 48 of the 50 states. Justice William Brennan wrote for a five-justice majority in holding that the defendant Gregory Lee Johnson's act of flag burning was protected speech under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Johnson was represented by attorneys David D. Cole and William Kunstler. The opinion of the Court came down as a controversial 5-4 decision, with the majority opinion delivered by William J. Brennan, Jr. and Justices Marshall, Blackmun, Scalia, and Kennedy joining Brennan, with Kennedy also writing a concurrence. The Court first considered the question of whether the First Amendment protected non-speech acts, since Johnson was convicted of flag desecration rather than verbal communication, and, if so, whether Johnson's burning of the flag constituted expressive conduct, which would permit him to invoke the First Amendment in challenging his conviction.
Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992)
Planned Parenthood v. Casey, (1992) was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the constitutionality of several Pennsylvania state regulations regarding abortion were challenged. The Court's plurality opinion upheld the constitutional right to have an abortion and altered the standards for analyzing restrictions of that right, invalidating one regulation but upholding the other four.
U.S. v. Lopez (1995)
United States v. Alfonso D. Lopez, Jr. (1995) was the first United States Supreme Court case since the New Deal to set limits to Congress's power under the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court affirmed the decision of the Court of Appeals. It held that while Congress had broad lawmaking authority under the Commerce Clause, the power was limited, and did not extend so far from "commerce" as to authorize the regulation of the carrying of handguns, especially when there was no evidence that carrying them affected the economy on a massive scale.
Vernonia School District v. Acton (1995)
Vernonia School District 47J v. Acton, (1995) was a U.S. Supreme Court decision which upheld the constitutionality of random drug testing regimen implemented by the local public schools in Vernonia, Oregon. Under that regimen, student athletes were required to submit to random drug testing before being allowed to participate in sports. During the season, 10% of all athletes were selected at random for testing. The Supreme Court held that although the tests were searches under the Fourth Amendment, they were reasonable in light of the schools' interest in preventing teenage drug use.
Clinton v. New York (1998)
Clinton v. City of New York, (1998), is a legal case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the line-item veto as granted in the Line Item Veto Act of 1996 violated the Presentment Clause of the United States Constitution because it impermissibly gave the President of the United States the power to unilaterally amend or repeal parts of statutes that had been duly passed by the United States Congress. The decision of the Court, in a six-to-three majority, was delivered by Justice John Paul Stevens. In a majority opinion written by Justice John Paul Stevens, the Court ruled that because the Act allowed the President to unilaterally amend or repeal parts of duly enacted statutes by using line-item cancellations, it violated the Presentment Clause of the Constitution, which outlines a specific practice for enacting a statute. The Court construed the silence of the Constitution on the subject of such unilateral Presidential action as equivalent to "an express prohibition", agreeing with historical material that supported the conclusion that statutes may only be enacted "in accord with a single, finely wrought and exhaustively considered, procedure", and that a bill must be approved or rejected by the President in its entirety.
Boy Scouts of America et al v. Dale (2000)
Boy Scouts of America v Dale, (2000), was a landmark case of the Supreme Court of the United States decided on June 28, 2000, that held that the constitutional right to freedom of association allows a private organization like the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) to exclude a person from membership when "the presence of that person affects in a significant way the group's ability to advocate public or private viewpoints." In a five to four decision, the Supreme Court ruled that opposition to homosexuality is part of BSA's "expressive message" and that allowing homosexuals as adult leaders would interfere with that message. It reversed a decision of the New Jersey Supreme Court that had determined that New Jersey's public accommodations law required the BSA to readmit assistant Scoutmaster James Dale, who had made his homosexuality public and whom the BSA had expelled from the organization.
Grutter v Bollinger (2003)
Grutter v. Bollinger, (2003), was a landmark case in which the United States Supreme Court upheld the affirmative action admissions policy of the University of Michigan Law School. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, writing for the majority in a 5-4 decision and joined by Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer, ruled that the University of Michigan Law School had a compelling interest in promoting class diversity. The court held that a race-conscious admissions process that may favor "underrepresented minority groups," but that also took into account many other factors evaluated on an individual basis for every applicant, did not amount to a quota system that would have been unconstitutional under Regents of the University of California v. Bakke.
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