Supreme Court Cases Flashcards
(15 cards)
McCulloch v Maryland (1819)
The issue revolved around the right of Maryland to tax paper currency needed by a branch of the U.S. National Bank located in that state. The bank was established by Congress using the elastic clause of the constitution. In one of a series of landmark decisions, the Supreme Court, under the leadership of John Marshall, ruled unanimously that the “power to tax involves the power to destroy.” The court reasoned because the United States had the right to count and regulate money and had the right to set up the National Bank to do this under the “necessary and proper” clause. After the bank was created, the laws protecting it were supreme; therefore , Maryland could not tax the federal bank.
United States v Lopez (1995)
In 1992, Alfonso Lopez, a high school senior, walked into his San Antonio high school with a concealed weapon. He was arrested for violating a Texas law that prohibited firearm possession on school grounds. At first, Lopez was charged in a court in Texas, but he was later charged with violating the Gun-Free Schools Act, a federal offense.
Lopez was found guilty and appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that this law was an overreach of congressional power because schools were supposed to be controlled at the state level, not the federal level. The court agreed with him and overturned the conviction.
US v. Lopez was a landmark case as ruled that the federal government had exceeded its authority under the commerce clause.
Baker v Carr(1962)
Charles baker challenged Tennessee’s apportionment law claiming that when reapportionment was done by the state legislature it did not take into account population shifts, and it favored rural areas. The issue was whether federal courts can decide the political issue of a state apportionment procedure. This decision created guidelines for drawing up congressional districts and guaranteed a more equitable system of representation to the citizens of each state. The court reformulated the political question doctrine of whether districts were apportioned for political reasons, coming up with the doctrine of “one person, one vote”.
Shaw v Reno (1993)
After North Carolina created three majority-minority districts when the U.S. attorney general sued the state for creating one district that was gerrymandered, ensuring that a Black candidate would win, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was used to challenge how the districts were created. The issue was whether the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment mandated that legislative redistricting must use race as one of the factors to ensure minority representation. In a 5-4 decision the Supreme Court reversed the lower court’s description of the shape of the new district as “bizarre” and said such a district “bears an uncomfortable resemblance to political apartheid.”
Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969)
Iowa teenagers Mary Beth Tinker, her brother John, and their friend Christopher Eckhardt were suspended from their public high school for wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War. In the resulting case, the Supreme Court ruled that the armbands were a form of symbolic speech, which is protected by the First Amendment, and therefore the school had violated the students’ First Amendment rights.
New York Times Co. v. United States (1971)
New York Times Co. v. United States (1971) — In 1971, the United States government attempted to restrain the New York Times and the Washington Post from publishing excerpts from the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret history of US military action in Vietnam, based on national security concerns. In the resulting case, the Supreme Court ruled that the government’s attempt to bar publication of the Pentagon Papers violated the First Amendment right to freedom of the press, and that publishing a history of the war did not pose an immediate national security threat to American military forces.
McDonald v. Chicago (2010)
The first case in which the Second Amendment right to “keep and bear Arms” was incorporated to the states. The City of Chicago passed a handgun ban in 1982; Chicago resident Otis McDonald filed a lawsuit challenging the ban in 2008 on the basis that he needed a handgun for self-defense. The Court declared the handgun ban unconstitutional by a 5-4 majority, ruling that the Second Amendment right to bear arms for self-defence is fundamental, and therefore incorporated to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause.
Roe v. Wade (1973)
Norma McCorvey, called by the alias Jane Roe in the court proceedings, wished to terminate her pregnancy but found she could not do so safely or legally in the state of Texas. In the resulting Supreme Court case, the Court ruled that a woman’s decision to have an abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy was protected by the constitutional right to privacy which is incorporated to the states, and that it was therefore unconstitutional for a state to criminalize all abortions.
Gideon v. Wainwright (1963)
The Supreme Court incorporated the Sixth Amendment right to legal counsel at the state level, ruling that state courts were responsible for providing a lawyer to a defendant who could not afford one. In 1961, a Florida court refused to provide a public defender for Clarence Earl Gideon, who was accused of robbery. Gideon appealed his conviction to the US Supreme Court on the grounds that the Fourteenth Amendment incorporated the Sixth Amendment’s right to counsel to the states.
The Supreme Court ruled in Gideon’s favor, requiring states to provide a lawyer to any defendant who could not afford one.
Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
Oliver Brown was the father of Linda, an African American third grader who was forced to attend a segregated elementary school. Along with other African American families in the area, Brown sued the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. Under the leadership of future Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund sought to prove with this case that segregated public schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause.
In its decision, the Supreme Court agreed, ruling that “in the field of public education, separate but equal has no place.” This ruling was a crucial victory for the civil rights movement, and later cases challenging segregation built on the precedent set in Brown.
Marbury v. Madison (1803)
William Marbury was denied a presidential appointment, made by outgoing President John Adams and confirmed by the Senate, because James Madison, secretary of state to the new president, Thomas Jefferson, refused to deliver the appointment to him. The issue was: Can the Supreme Court declare a legislative act, the Judiciary Act of 1789, unconstitutional because of its requirement to bring the case to the Supreme Court using the original jurisdiction doctrine? The landmark decision established the principle of judicial review.
Schenck v. United States (1919)
Charles Schenck and Elizabeth Baer were convicted under the 1917 Espionage Act for mailing leaflets encouraging men to resist the military draft. They appealed to the Supreme Court on the grounds that the conviction violated their free speech rights.
The Supreme Court upheld their convictions, ruling that speech that creates a “clear and present danger” (by encouraging violence or insurrection, or endangering national security) is not protected by the First Amendment.
Engel v. Vitale (1962)
Engel v. Vitale is a landmark Supreme Court case from 1962 that ruled it unconstitutional for state officials to compose an official school prayer and encourage its recitation in public schools, as this practice violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. This case highlighted the tension between government involvement in religion and the protection of individual religious freedoms, reinforcing the principle of separation of church and state.
Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972)
The state of Wisconsin fined three Amish families for refusing to send their children to school past the eighth grade. State law mandated that all students attend school until age 16.
The Amish families’ case went to the Supreme Court, which ruled that the Wisconsin law violated their right to free exercise of religion.
Citizens United v Federal Election Commission (2010)
Citizens United is a conservative 501(c)4 non-profit organization in the United Staes that challenged the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Finance Act decision to prevent the group from financing a negative movie about Hillary Clinton. The constitutional issue was whether the Supreme Court’s Previous rulings and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Finance Act apply to nonprofit organizations or are those organizations protected by the First Amendment free-speech clause in relation to supporting political issues? The majority decision changed the entire manner in which campaign laws were able to raise funds. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission is a landmark Supreme Court case from 2010 that ruled that corporations and unions can spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns, as long as they do so independently of a candidate’s campaign. This decision expanded the concept of free speech under the First Amendment, establishing that spending money in elections is a form of protected speech and reshaping the landscape of campaign finance in the United States.
