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47 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Marbury v. Madison
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(1803) “A law repugnant to the Constitution is void.”
With these words, Chief Justice John Marshall established the Supreme Court’s role in the new government. Hereafter, the Court was recognized as having the power to review all acts of Congress where constitutionality was at issue, and judge whether they abide by the Constitution. |
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McCullough v. Maryland
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(1819) “Let the end be legitimate … and all means which are … consistent with the letter and spirit of the Constitution, are constitutional.”
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United States v. Nixon
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(1974) “Neither separation of powers, nor the need for confidentiality can sustain unqualified Presidential immunity from the judicial process.”
President Nixon sought precisely this type of immunity, rather than relinquishing the famous White House tapes during the Watergate scandal. The Court unanimously rejected his plea as an unconstitutional power play. The House began impeachment proceedings shortly thereafter, and two weeks after the ruling, Nixon resigned. |
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Gibbons v. Ogden
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(1824) When a federal and state law are in conflict, the federal law is supreme. Congress and New York had both passed laws regulating the steamboat industry. Gibbons had a federal permit for a steamboat business; Ogden had a state permit for the same waters. Siding with Gibbons, the Court said that, in matters of interstate commerce, the “Supremacy Clause” tilts the balance of power in favor of federal legislation.
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Wickard v. Filburn
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(1942) Upheld federal regulation of the production of wheat for personal consumption under the affectation doctrine. Local activity can “be reached by Congress, if it exerts a substantial impact effect on interstate commerce” under the cumulative effects theory.
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Perez v. United States
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(1971) Local loan sharking activity found to be interstate commerce under the cumulative effects doctrine. Thus the court used the commerce clause to go after criminal activity.
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United States v. Lopez
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(1995) Commerce power held unconstitutional the Gun-Free School Zones act that prohibited knowing possession of firearms in a school zone. Enunciated three categories of activity that Congress could regulate under the Commerce Clause:
1. Channels of Interstate Commerce – roads, railroads, waterways, etc. 2. Instrumentalities of Interstate Commerce – trucks, planes, trains, etc. 3. Activities that have a substantial effect on Interstate Commerce |
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United States v. Morrison
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(2000) Violence Against Women Act an unconstitutional use of Commerce Clause authority. Activity must be economic in character. Possibly a step back from cumulate effects doctrine.
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Gonzales v. Raich
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(2005) Enforcement of Controlled Substances Act which prohibits the cultivation and use of marijuana was a valid exercise of the Commerce power when DEA agents seized marijuana in California grown for medicinal purposes. Activity here was clearly economic and related to Interstate Commerce.
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Hamdi v. Rumsfeld
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(2004) U.S. citizen detained in Afghanistan as an “enemy combatant.” Court ruled the detention was appropriate under the Authorization for Use of Military Force. However, the court rejected the Executive’s contention that the individual determinations regarding the detention were beyond the judiciary’s competence. Hamdi deserved certain due process rights.
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Boumediene v. Bush
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(2008) “Indefinite imprisonment [in Guantanamo] on reasonable suspicion is not an available option of treatment for those accused of aiding the enemy, absent a suspension of the writ [of habeas corpus].” Limited executive power.
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Dred Scott v. Sandford
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(1857) “The Constitution does not consider slaves to be U.S. citizens. Rather, they are constitutionally protected property of their masters.” Chief Justice Roger Taney authored this opinion— one of the most important and scorned in the nation’s history—deservedly so. Dred Scott, a slave, had moved with his master to Illinois, a free state. He moved again to a slave state, Missouri, and filed suit to gain freedom, under that state’s law of “Once free, always free.” Taney held that Scott had never been free at all, and cited Constitutional grounds for placing the slavery decision in the hands of the states. In trying to put an end to the slavery controversy, Taney instead sped the nation toward civil war. The decision was later overturned by the 13th.
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Plessy v. Furgesuon
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(1896) Jim Crow laws are constitutional under the doctrine of ‘Separate but Equal.’ Police arrested Homer Plessy for refusing to leave a railroad car that prohibited “colored” people. Under Louisiana law, Plessy was “colored” because he was one-eighth black. The Court ruled that the race-based “Jim Crow” laws did not violate the Constitution as long as the states proffered separate but equal treatment. “The Constitution is color blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.”
—Justice John Marshall Harlan,
from the lone dissenting opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson
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Brown v. Board of Education
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(1954) “In the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.” This unanimous decision marked the beginning of the end for the “Separate But Equal” era that started with Plessy, and the start of a new period of American race relations. With Brown, desegregation of public schools began—as did resistance to it. Ten contentious years later, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made racial equality a matter of federal law.
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Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
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(1978) Allen Bakke, white, was denied admission to Davis’s medical school even though he had higher scores than some special program applicants. Court ruled in Bakke’s favor, the swing-vote Powell writing that Davis’s program violated both Equal Protection and Title VI, and that the Civil Rights Act was violated. Decisions based on race must be made by government policy makers—rather than university employees—in a position to narrowly tailor the race-conscious program to further the compelling interest with the least burden to the disadvantaged race.
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Korematsu v. US
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(1944) Exteme danger of sabotage justifies the removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast to the interior—a compelling interest.
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The Slaughterhouse Cases
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(1873) Louisiana had created a partial monopoly of the slaughtering business and gave it to one company. Competitors argued that this created "involuntary servitude," abridged "privileges and immunities," denied "equal protection of the laws," and deprived them of "liberty and property without due process of law." Did this violate the 13th and 14th Amendments? No. The involuntary servitude claim did not forbid limits on the right to use one's property. The equal protection claim was misplaced since it was established to void laws discriminating against blacks. The due process claim simply imposes the identical requirements on the states as the fifth amendment imposes on the national government. The Court devoted most of its opinion to a narrow construction of the privileges and immunities clause, which was interpreted to apply to national citizenship, not state citizenship.
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Kelo v. City of New London
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(2005) Major taking case. Court rule in favor of the developers because their plan was comprehensive in character and formulated with appropriate deliberation. Given the limited scope of judicial review in such cases, the plan was entitled to judicial deference.
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Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward
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(1819) In 1816, the New Hampshire legislature attempted to change Dartmouth College-- a privately funded institution--into a state university. The legislature changed the school's corporate charter by transferring the control of trustee appointments to the governor. In an attempt to regain authority over the resources of Dartmouth College, the old trustees filed suit against William H. Woodward, who sided with the new appointees. the Court held that the College's corporate charter qualified as a contract between private parties, with which the legislature could not interfere. The fact that the government had commissioned the charter did not transform the school into a civil institution. Chief Justice Marshall's opinion emphasized that the term "contract" referred to transactions involving individual property rights, not to "the political relations between the government and its citizens."
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United States Trust Co. v. New Jersey
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(1977) New York and New Jersey had established a Port Authority to enhance water- bound business between the two states. In 1974, the states repealed a 1962 bond agreement which limited the Authority to administer commercial and passenger railroad subsidies. The repeal violated the Constitution. Justice Blackmun argued that the states could have implemented a less drastic solution to encourage people to use commuter train services in lieu of driving their cars. (State leaders thought the increase in bridge fares that would occur with the agreement's repeal would cause this to occur.) Furthermore, since the need to facilitate mass transportation in the New York metropolitan area had been a concern long before 1962, the states could not justify their action as a response to unforeseen circumstances.
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Mapp v. Ohio
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(1961) Evidence that is illegally obtained by the state may not be used against a defendant in court. Until Mapp, only the federal government was barred from using illegally obtained evidence. So when local police entered Dolly Mapp’s home without a search warrant and arrested her for possessing obscene books, her conviction initially stood. The Court overturned her conviction, however, and extended the Constitutional rule to apply to the states and their subdivisions.
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Gideon v. Wainwright
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(1963) Defendants in criminal cases have an absolute right to counsel. Too poor to afford a lawyer, Clarence Earl Gideon was convicted for breaking into a poolroom—a felony crime in Florida. He appealed to the Supreme Court, which ruled that the government must provide free counsel to accused criminals who cannot pay for it themselves. At first, the ruling applied to felonies only. It was later extended to cover any cases where the penalty was six months imprisonment or longer.
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Miranda v. Arizona
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(1966) “You have the right to remain silent …” After police questioning, Ernesto Miranda confessed to kidnapping and raping a woman. The Court struck down his conviction, on grounds that he was not informed of his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination. Hereafter, the Miranda warnings have been a standard feature of arrest procedures.
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New York Times v. United States
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(1971) [Pentagon Papers] Invalidated prior restraint on the press because of the government’s failure to meet the heavy burden of justifying prior restraint.
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New York Times v. Sullivan
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(1964) To win a libel case, public figures must prove “actual malice” on the part of the writer. In 1964, the Times published an ad critical of an elected commissioner of an Alabama city. The commissioner sued for libel and won. The Supreme Court overturned that ruling, and said that, to ensure “uninhibited, robust and wide-open” debate about public figures, the law must protect writers from libel suits. Thus, unless the words are penned with “knowing falsity” or “reckless disregard for the truth,” a writer cannot be successfully sued by a public figure for libel.
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Gertz v. Welch
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(1974) Gertz was an attorney hired by a family to sue a police officer who had killed the family's son. In a magazine called American Opinion, the John Birch Society accused Gertz of being a "Leninist" and a "Communist-fronter" because he chose to represent clients who were suing a law enforcement officer. Gertz lost his libel suit because a lower court found that the magazine had not violated the actual malice test for libel which the Supreme Court had established in New York Times v. Sullivan (1964). The Court reversed the lower court decision and held that Gertz's rights had been violated. Justice Powell argued that the application of the New York Times v. Sullivan standard in this case was inappropriate because Gertz was neither a public official nor a public figure. In the context of the opinion, Powell advanced many lines of reasoning to establish that ordinary citizens should be allowed more protection from libelous statements than individuals in the public eye. However, continued Powell, the actual malice standard did not lose all significance in cases involving ordinary citizens as he advised states to use it in assessing claims for punitive damages by citizens suing for libel.
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Miller v. California
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(1973) Established the modern definition of obscenity:
1. The average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest. 2. The work, taken as a whole depicts or describes , in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law. 3. The work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. |
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Citizens United v. Federal Election Committee
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(2010) Under the 1st Amendment, corporate funding of independent political broadcasts in candidate elections cannot be limited.
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Boy Scouts of America v. Dale
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(2000) The right of expressive association of a Boy Scout Troup trumped a New Jersey anti-discrimination law, thus the Scouts could dismiss a gay man from his position.
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Lemon v. Kurtzman
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(1971) Announced the three-part test to evaluate Establishment Clause challenges:
1. Does the law have a secular legislative purpose? 2. Does the principal or primary effect of the law neither advance or inhibit religion? and 3. Does the law avoid “an excessive government entanglement with religion”? If the answer to each of the questions is yes, then the law is okay. Lots of exceptions to the rule. |
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Corporation of the Presiding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints v. Amos
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(1987) A religious exception in the Title VII prohibition of discrimination in employment is okay if it is a “mere accommodation for religion” and alleviates “significant governmental interference with [the religion’s] mission.”
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Reynolds v. United States
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(1879) Federal law criminalizing bigamy (polygamy) is constitutional. Government can regulate religious conduct with any Free Exercise constraints. This view has been abandoned.
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Christian Legal Society v. Martinez
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(2010) Court ruled that CLS of Hasting College of Law had to admit any student, regardless of their beliefs, into their organization contrary to a provision in the society’s bylaws that said members had to subscribe to a belief in Christ and his resurrection. The court ruled that the all-comer’s policy is a reasonable, viewpoint-neutral condition and therefore did not transgress the 1st Amendment.
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Sherbert v. Verner
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(1963) Adeil Sherbert, a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, was fired from her job after she refused to work on Saturday, the Sabbath Day of her faith. The South Carolina Employment Security Commission denied her benefits, finding unacceptable her religious justification for refusing Saturday work. The Court held that the state's eligibility restrictions for unemployment compensation imposed a significant burden on Sherbert's ability to freely exercise her faith. Furthermore, there was no compelling state interest which justified such a substantial burden on this basic First Amendment right.
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Wisconsin v. Yoder
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(1972) Jonas Yoder and Wallace Miller, both members of the Old Order Amish religion, and Adin Yutzy, a member of the Conservative Amish Mennonite Church, were prosecuted under a Wisconsin law that required all children to attend public schools until age 16. The three parents refused to send their children to such schools after the eighth grade, arguing that high school attendance was contrary to their religious beliefs. In a unanimous decision, the Court held that individual's interests in the free exercise of religion under the First Amendment outweighed the State's interests in compelling school attendance beyond the eighth grade. In the majority opinion by Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, the Court found that the values and programs of secondary school were "in sharp conflict with the fundamental mode of life mandated by the Amish religion," and that an additional one or two years of high school would not produce the benefits of public education cited by Wisconsin to justify the law. Justice William O. Douglas filed a partial dissent but joined with the majority regarding Yoder.
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Engel v. Vitale
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(1962) Public institutions (i.e., a school system) cannot require prayer. Lawrence Roth, an avowed atheist, objected that the Long Island, New York School System was forcing his two children to recite a 22-word prayer at the beginning of the day. There were actually four other parents involved in the suit against school board president William Vitale, Jr. The Supreme Court ruled that although the prayer was nonsectarian and noncompulsory, “it is no part the business of government to compose official prayers.” Because New York provided the prayer, it indirectly approved religion and that was unconstitutional.
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Lochner v. New York
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(1905) Ruled that a New York law setting maximum working hours for bakers was unconstitutional. The Court held that the Constitution prohibits states from interfering with most employment contracts because the right to buy and sell labor is a fundamental freedom protected by the 14th Amendment. The decision, and the resulting "Lochner era" it ushered in, led to the abrogation of many progressive era and Great Depression laws regulating working conditions. In 1937, the Supreme Court overturned Lochner in West Coast Hotel v. Parrish.
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Allgeyer v. Louisiana
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(1897) A landmark case in which a unanimous court struck down a Lousiana law on grounds that it violated an individual's "liberty to contract." This was the first case in which the Supreme Court interpreted the word liberty in the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment to mean economic liberty.
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Roe v. Wade
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(1973) Ruled that abortion is legal and that the state can only restrict it in certain circumstances and at certain times during the pregnancy.
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Griswold v. Connecticut
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(1965) Ruled that a state's ban on the use of contraceptives violated the right to marital privacy. The case concerned a Connecticut law that criminalized the encouragement or use of birth control. Discovered the right in the “penumbra” of other, enumerated rights in the Bill of Rights.
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Barron v. City of Baltimore
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(1833) Established the precedent that the Bill of Rights applied only to the federal government.
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Palko v. Connecticut and Duncan v. Louisiana
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(1937, 1968) Two important cases that implemented so-called selective incorporation of the Bill of Rights against the states. In Palko, Justice Benjamin Cardozo held that the Due Process Clause protected only those rights that were "of the very essence of a scheme of ordered liberty." In Duncan, Justice White used the words "deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” as a hallmark of rights that should be incorporated against the states.
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District of Columbia v. Heller and Mcdonald v. Chicago
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(2008, 2010) These two cases resolved the 2nd Amendment controversy. Heller held that the right to bear arms was an individual right rather than a militia right, and McDonald incorporated the 2nd Amendment against the states.
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Civil Rights Cases
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(1883) Held that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was unconstitutional and that neither the 13th nor the 14th amendment empowers the Congress to legislate in matters of racial discrimination in the private sector.
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Shelly v. Kraemer
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(1948) Held that courts could not enforce racial covenants on real estate.
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Marsh v. Alabama
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(1946) Ruled that a state trespassing statute could not be used to prevent the distribution of religious materials on a town's sidewalk, notwithstanding the fact that the sidewalk where the distribution was taking place was part of a privately owned company town.
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Jones v. Alfred Mayer
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(1968) Held that Congress could regulate the sale of private property in order to prevent racial discrimination.
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