-
Dred Scott v. Sandford
highly controversial case that intensified the national debate over slavery. The case involved Dred Scott, a slave, who was taken from a slave state to a free territory. Scott filed a lawsuit claiming that because he had lived on free soil he was entitled to his freedom. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney disagreed, ruling that blacks were not citizens and therefore could not sue in federal court. Taney further inflamed antislavery forces by declaring that Congress had no right to ban slavery from U. -
United States v. Cruikshank - assembly
The Supreme Court said that the "right of the people peaceably to assemble for the purpose of petitioning Congress for a redress of grievances, or for any thing else connected with the powers and duties of the national government, is an attribute of national citizenship, and, as such, under the protection of, and guaranteed by, the United States." The high court applied the liberty only to any federal government's encroachment. -
Reynolds v. U.S - freedom of religion
leader Wilford Woodruff issued a document called the Manifesto, which terminated "any marriages forbidden by the law of the land." After 1890, most Mormons abandoned polygamy. -
Schenck v. United States _free expression
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes stated in this case his famous aphorism about "falsely shouting fire in a theatre" and set forth a "clear and present danger test" to judge whether speech is protected by the First Amendment. "The question," he wrote, "is whether the words are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has the right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree -
Evans v. Selma Union High School District of Fresno County - right to read freely
The California State Supreme Court held that the King James version of the Bible was not a "publication of a sectarian, partisan, or denominational character" that a State statute required a public high school library to exclude from its collections. The "fact that the King James version is commonly used by Protestant Churches and not by Catholics" does not "make its character sectarian," the court stated. -
Cantwell v. Connecticut - religion
The issue presented before the court was whether the state's action in convicting the Cantwells with inciting a breach of the peace and violating the solicitation statute violated their First Amendment right to free exercise of religion. The Court found that Cantwell's action was protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. -
The New York Times v. Sullivan, -libel
Supreme Court held that no public official may recover "damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves that the statement was made with 'actual malice'--that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not." The Court stated that the First and Fourteenth Amendments require that critics of official conduct have the "fair equivalent" to the immunity protection given to a public official when he is sued for defama -
Tinker vs. Des Moines School District - freedom of speech
students who had been expelled for wearing black armbands protesting the Vietnam War, were judged to have had their right to Freedom of Speech unjustly violated. The Court said that they had the right to express this symbolic representation of their belief against the war. The Court said the school could only restrict student speech if it were to "materially and substantially disrupt" the classroom. -
Stanley v. Georgia - Right to Privacy and Anonymity
A man found to possess obscene materials in his home for his private use was convicted of possessing obscene materials in violation of the state laws of Georgia. The Supreme Court overturned the conviction, holding that Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas, regardless of their social worth, and to be generally free from governmental intrusions into one's privacy on the grounds that the government "cannot constitutionally premise legislation on the desirability of cont -
New York Times Company v. United States - free press
In the "Pentagon Papers" case, the U.S. government attempted to enjoin the New York Times and the Washington Post from publishing classified documents concerning the Vietnam War. Applying the doctrine of prior restraint from Near v. Minnesota, the Court found that the claims that publication of the documents would interfere with foreign policy and prolong the war were too speculative, and could not overcome the strong presumption against prior restraints. -
BROWN v. GLINES - freedom of petition
Air Force regulations require members of that service to obtain approval from their commanders before circulating petitions on Air Force bases. Respondent Air Force Reserve officer was removed from active duty for distributing on an Air Force base petitions to Members of Congress and the Secretary of Defense, which complained about Air Force grooming standards, without having obtained approval of the base commander as required by the regulations. -
Zykan v. Warsaw (Indiana) Community School Corporation and Warsaw School Board of Trustees - freedom of expression in schools
A student brought suit seeking to reverse school officials' decision to "limit or prohibit the use of certain textbooks, to remove a certain book from the school library, and to delete certain courses from the curriculum." The district court dismissed the suit. On appeal, the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled that the school board has the right to establish a curriculum on the basis of its own discretion, but it is forbidden to impose a "pall of orthodoxy." The right of students to -
Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell - free press
Hustler Magazine published a parody of a liquor advertisement in which Rev. Jerry Falwell described his "first time" as a drunken encounter with his mother in an outhouse. A unanimous Supreme Court held that a public figure had to show actual malice in order to recover for intentional infliction of emotional distress as a result of a parody in a magazine. The Court held that political cartoons and satire such as this parody "have played a prominent role in public and political debate. And althou -
Texas vs. Johnson - freedom of speech
This was a very different decision than the one it made regarding flag burning in a 1989 case called Texas vs. Johnson. In it, the Supreme Court ruled that flag burning was protected speech and that the "government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable."
Congress responded to this decision by passing the Flag Protection Act of 1989 making it a federal crime to desecrate a flag. -
Concerned Women for America, Inc. v. Lafayette County - right to free association and religion
The County library that had permitted various groups to use its auditorium had created a designated public forum and thus could not deny access to groups whose meetings had political or religious content. Such a denial would be based on the content of speech and would be permissible only as the least restrictive means to serve a compelling interest. Preventing disruption or interference with general use of the library could be such an interest; library officials' first step to controlling such d -
American Library Association v. U.S. Department of Justice and Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union - the Internet
In a 9-0 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court on June 26, 1997, declared unconstitutional a federal law making it a crime to send or display indecent material on line in a way available to minors. The Court held that speech on the Internet is entitled to the highest level of First Amendment protection, similar to the protection the Court gives to books and newspapers.