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Marbury v. Madison
This case established the Supreme Court's power of judicial review. The case was invoked by a Supreme Court justice that had sued for thier jobs in the Supreme Court. -
McCulloch v. Maryland
Congress has the power to incorporate the bank and that Maryland could not tax insturments of the national government employed in the execution of constitutional powers. Congress possessed unenumerated powers not explicity outlined in the Constitution. -
Gibbons v. Ogden
Regulation of navigation by steamboat operators and other for purposes of conducting interstate was a power reserved to and exercised by the Congress. -
Dred Scott v. Sanford
No person decended from an American slave had ever been a citizen. The Court then held the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, hoping to end the slavery question once and for all. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
Is Louisiana's law mandating racial segregationon its trains an unconstitutional infringement on both the privileges and immunities and the equil protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment? Segregation does not in itself constitute unlawful discrimination. -
Lochner v. New York
The state of New York enacted a statue forbidding bakers t owork more than 60 hours a week or 10 hours a day. Interfered with the freedom of contract. -
Schenck v. United States
" The Court supported the "fixed buffer zones" because they protected the government's interest in public safety, by preventing protesters from engaging in unlawful conduct while still allowing them to be heard from a short distance. -
Gitlow v. New York
Does the First Amendment apply to the states? Yes. A state may forbid both speech and publication if they have a tendency to result in action dangerous to public security, even though such utterances create no clear and present danger -
Brown v. Board of Education
Racial segregation in public education has a detrimental effect on minority children because it is interpreted as a sign of inferiority. Separate but equal is inherently unequal in the context of public education. -
Mapp v. Ohio
Mapp had been convicted on the basis of illegally obtained evidence. This was an historic -- and controversial -- decision. It placed the requirement of excluding illegally obtained evidence from court at all levels of the government. -
Abington School District v. Schempp
The required activities encroached on both the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment since the readings and recitations were essentially religious ceremonies and were "intended by the State to be so." -
Gideon v. Wainright
In this case the Court found that the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of counsel was a fundamental right, essential to a fair trial, which should be made applicable to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice Black called it an "obvious truth" that a fair trial for a poor defendant could not be guaranteed without the assistance of counsel. -
Griswold v. Connecticut
Though the Constitution does not explicitly protect a general right to privacy, the various guarantees within the Bill of Rights create penumbras, or zones, that establish a right to privacy. Together, the First, Third, Fourth, and Ninth Amendments, create a new constitutional right, the right to privacy in marital relations. -
Harper v, Virginia Board of Elections
In a 6-to-3 decision, the Court held that making voter affluence an electoral standard violated the Equal Protection Clause. The Court found that wealth or fee-paying had no relation to voting qualifications. -
Miranda v. Arizona
The Court held that prosecutors could not use statements stemming from custodial interrogation of defendants unless they demonstrated the use of procedural safeguards "effective to secure the privilege against self-incrimination." The Court specifically outlined the necessary aspects of police warnings to suspects, including warnings of the right to remain silent and the right to have counsel present during interrogations. -
Tinker v. Des Moines
The wearing of armbands was "closely akin to 'pure speech'" and protected by the First Amendment. School environments imply limitations on free expression, but here the principals lacked justification for imposing any such limits. -
Roe v. Wade
The Court held that a woman's right to an abortion fell within the right to privacy (recognized in Griswold v. Connecticut) protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. -
United States v. Nixon
The Court held that neither the doctrine of separation of powers, nor the generalized need for confidentiality of high-level communications, without more, can sustain an absolute, unqualified, presidential privilege. The Court granted that there was a limited executive privilege in areas of military or diplomatic affairs, but gave preference to "the fundamental demands of due process of law in the fair administration of justice." -
Regents of the University of California at Davis v. Bakke
The Court managed to minimize white opposition to the goal of equality (by finding for Bakke) while extending gains for racial minorities through affirmative action. -
Texas v. Johnson
The Court found that Johnson's actions fell into the category of expressive conduct and had a distinctively political nature.
