Cases

Question 1

Lyon’s Case & United States v. Callender - Paterson, J.

Answer 1

1. The constitutionality of the Sedition Act is outside the scope of the jury.
2. The constitutionality of the Sedition Act is outside the scope of the jury. Congress has made clear that those who write libelous content about the United States government are guilty of sedition.
3. A jury’s province is to determine facts, not the constitutionality of a law.
4. In this case, Lyon admitted to criticizing the United States government and to publicizing the French diplomat’s letter doing the same. As Lyon admitted to the underlying facts of the crime of sedition, the jury returned a guilty verdict. The court orders Lyon to prison for four months.

Question 2

Marbury v. Madison - Marshall

Answer 2

1. The Supreme Court of the United States has the authority to review laws and legislative acts to determine whether they comply with the United States Constitution.
2. The Constitution clearly limits the powers that may be exercised by each branch of government. The legislative branch must operate within these Constitutionally defined limits in passing laws.
3. The role of the judicial branch is to identify, interpret, and apply the law to decide cases. If there is a conflict between a law passed by Congress and the Constitution, then the Constitution must control, and the offending law will be void.
4. The Act is unconstitutional because it seeks to expand the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction, and therefore, the Court cannot exercise jurisdiction over Marbury’s claim.

Question 3

Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer

War Powers, Federalist 51, Separation of powers (+Con Jackson/Vision dissent)

Answer 3

1. The President of the United States may not engage in lawmaking activity absent an express authorization from Congress or the text of the Constitution.
2. The President’s power to issue executive orders must come from either an act of Congress or the Constitution.
3. Congress expressly rejected the use of seizure to solve labor disputes as unconstitutional when it considered the drafting of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947.

Concurrence (Jackson, J.)
1. The President and Congress have distinct powers, but the Constitution allows for some overlap of authority in different scenarios.
2. 3 ebbs

Dissent (Vinson, C.J.)
1. The President acted in a necessary way to prevent a crisis of national defense that could result from a lack of steel production.
2. The Constitution delegates to the President the duty to execute legislative programs.
3. The President’s actions are fully within the actions given to the executive branch by the Constitution, as the Framers necessarily made the executive branch a robust one so it could serve as an actual check and balance to the other branches of government

Question 4

Nondelegation Doctrine, Intelligible Principle Doctrine

Gundy v. United States

Answer 4

1. Authorizing the attorney general to enforce the national Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act against pre-act offenders does not violate the nondelegation doctrine under the current intelligible-principle standard.
2. Article I of the Constitution vests all legislative power in Congress and prohibits delegating it to other governmental branches.
3. The Court has repeatedly upheld statutory delegations as constitutional if Congress provided intelligible guidance directing how the delegee must perform. Nondelegation inquiries begin with interpreting the statute to see if Congress provided an intelligible guiding principle. If so, the inquiry ends there.

Question 5

Myers v. United States

Answer 5

1. The U.S. Constitution grants the president the sole power to remove executive officers.
2. Congress passed an act providing that postmasters of the first class must be appointed and removed “by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.”
3. The majority of the First Congress found the removal power to be held solely by the president.
4. The First Congress noted that the president is charged with faithfully executing the laws of the United States.

Question 6

Removal: Executive Officers Quasi-Legislative & Judicial

Humphrey’s Executor v. United States

Answer 6

1. Is the president’s power to remove an executive branch official applicable to officials with legislative or judicial functions?
2. The president’s power to remove an executive branch official is not applicable to officials with legislative or judicial functions.
3. The postmaster is a position restricted to the performance of executive functions. By contrast, an FTC commissioner’s functions are not exclusively executive in nature.

Question 7

Removal: Inferior Officers

Morrison v. Olson

Answer 7

1. A law vesting the judiciary with the power to appoint an inferior executive officer (an independent counsel) and prohibiting the Attorney General from removing the officer without good cause does not violate separation-of-powers principles.
2. The Constitution divides federal officers into “principal” and “inferior” officers.
3. The Appointments Clause requires principal officers to be appointed by the President and approved by the Senate, but allows inferior officers to be appointed by the President, department heads, or the judiciary.
4. There is not a precise line separating principal and inferior officers, but some factors affecting an officer’s characterization include whether the officer is subject to removal by a higher department official and whether the scope of the officer’s duties and jurisdiction is limited

Question 8

Executive Discretion in Prosecution

United States v. Cox

Answer 8

1. As an attorney for the government, a prosecutor has the discretionary power to decide whether to commence prosecution in a particular case.
2. The president of the United States has the constitutional power to faithfully execute the laws.
3. U.S. attorneys are executive officials who carry out this power by prosecuting offenses and participating in legal proceedings on the federal government’s behalf.
4. The grand jury’s role in such proceedings is limited to a determination of whether there is probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed.
5. A U.S. attorney’s discretionary power to decide whether prosecution is appropriate in any given case is often distinct from the issue of probable cause.
6. A court may not review, coerce, or interfere with the executive branch’s discretionary power over criminal proceedings under the separation of powers

Question 9

Justiciable Doctrine (Standing, Mootness, Ripeness)

Massachusetts v. Mellon; Frothingham v. Mellon

Answer 9

1. The enactment of a federal law that applies tax funds to programs in which state participation is optional does not give rise to a justiciable controversy between the United States government and a state or an individual taxpayer.
2. The law does not require the state to do anything. State participation is optional and Massachusetts has not been forced to comply with any demand of the federal government.
3. In matters in which federal law affects the rights of individual citizens, it is the United States government that represents the interests of the citizens and it is to the United States government that citizens must turn for relief.

Question 10

Guarantee Clause, Political Question

Luther v. Borden

Answer 10

1. Under the Guarantee Clause, the particular government established in a state is a question for Congress, not the courts.
2. Pursuant to the Guarantee Clause of the United States Constitution, Congress guarantees each state a republican form of government.
3. In order to determine whether a form of government is republican, Congress must first determine the government that is established in a state.

Question 11

Sep. Powers, Political Question, Impeachment Proceeding = Non-justiciabl

(Walter) Nixon v. United States

Answer 11

1. Article I, Section 3, Clause 6 of the Constitution gives sole power to the Senate to try all impeachments.
2. The framers’ use of the word “sole” is significant in that it is a textually-demonstrable commitment of complete discretion to the Senate to conduct impeachment proceedings and to determine the rules by which those proceedings are conducted.
3. It is important that there be no judiciary role in deciding impeachment proceedings issues to ensure the judiciary remains unbiased in future criminal proceedings
4. Finally the framers intended impeachment proceedings to be the only check on the judicial branch by the legislature.

Question 12

Hamilton Test (means-end scrutiny) Implied v. Express Powers, N&P expand

McCulloch v. Maryland

Answer 12

1. The Constitution specifically delegates to Congress the power to tax and spend for the general welfare, and to make such other laws as it deems necessary and proper to carry out this enumerated power.
2. Additionally, federal laws are supreme and states may not make laws that interfere with the federal government’s exercise of its constitutional powers.
3. Congress has the constitutional power to charter the Bank of the United States. This power is ultimately derived from the Constitution’s grant to Congress of the general power to “tax and spend” for the general welfare.
4. The Bank was created by federal statute. Maryland may not tax the Bank as a federal institution because federal laws are supreme to state laws.

Question 13

Commerce = traffic, intercourse, and navigation

Gibbons v. Ogden

Answer 13

1. Congress is granted the power to regulate interstate commerce in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.
2. The word “commerce” includes traffic, intercourse, and navigation, as well as commodities associated with interstate commerce.
3. Congress may regulate all commercial activities occurring between states but not activities occurring solely within one state’s borders.
4. If a state and Congress both pass conflicting laws regulating interstate commerce, the federal law governs pursuant to Congress’s constitutional grant of power to regulate interstate commerce.

Question 14

Congress Can’t Regulate Purely Intrastate Commerce

Hammer v. Dagenhart (+Dissent Holmes, J.)

Answer 14

1. May Congress regulate the interstate commerce of goods produced in factories with child labor?
2. Firstly, Congress inappropriately attempted to regulate interstate commerce for the underlying purpose of seeking to standardize child labor regulations among the states.
3. The regulations bear no relationship to the goal of promoting interstate commerce as required by the Constitution.
4. Secondly, child labor is a purely local issue that should be regulated by individual states. Hence, even if Congress did have an appropriate purpose for passing child labor regulations, doing so would violate its Commerce Clause powers under the Constitution. Child labor relates to the production and manufacture of goods, and bears no relationship to the entry of those goods into the streams of interstate commerce.

Dissent (Holmes, J.)
1. The majority should not have disavowed the regulations passed by Congress as being an inappropriate attempt to influence states’ internal policies.
2. The immediate effect of the Keating-Owen Act is strictly to regulate the shipment of certain goods in interstate commerce.

Question 15

Overrule Hammer, Regulate Intra that affects Inter

United States v. Darby

Answer 15

1. While manufacturing is not itself interstate commerce, the shipment of manufactured goods between states falls within the definition of commerce and is thus capable of regulation by Congress under its plenary Commerce Clause powers.
2. The power of Congress over interstate commerce is absolute and is subject only to limitations prescribed by the Constitution.
3. The present holding has no effect on the Tenth Amendment’s assertion that all powers not given to the federal government are reserved to the states.

Question 16

Local Regulation Aggregation Principle

Wickard v. Filburn

Answer 16

1. Congress may regulate local activity if that activity exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce.
2. By growing his own wheat, Filburn decreases the amount of wheat purchased in the market and negatively impacts the price of wheat grown for interstate commerce.
3. It does not matter that Filburn himself only exerts a small impact on the wheat market.
4. When taken together with all the other farmers similarly situated, Filburn’s activity has a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce.
5. On account of the aggregate effect of homegrown wheat on the commercial wheat market, Congress may regulate Filburn’s activities.

Question 17

Reg chann, instrumentalities, activities related, Outer Limit Anti-Brut

United States v. Lopez (+Con = Kenndy/Thomas +Dis Breyer) 3 categories of regulation

Answer 17

1. May Congress, pursuant to its Commerce Clause powers, pass a law that prohibits the possession of a gun near a school?
2. No. While Congress has broad lawmaking authority under the Commerce Clause, this power does not extend so far as to authorize the regulation of the carrying of handguns, particularly when doing so has no clear effect on the economy overall.
3. Congress may regulate only three broad categories of activities: the channels of interstate commerce; the instrumentalities of, or persons or things in, interstate commerce; and ** activities that substantially affect** or substantially relate to interstate commerce.

Concurrence (Kennedy, J.)
1. The GFSZA upsets the balance of power between the federal and state governments.
2. Education is a traditional concern of the states.
Concurrence (Thomas, J.)
1. The new “substantial effects” test is problematic because it makes the Commerce clause “surplusage.”
2. Congress is not meant to regulate commercial activity to the full extent suggested by the majority’s holding.

Dissent (Breyer, J.)
1. Firstly, Congress’s power to regulate commerce among the several states encompasses the power to regulate local activities insofar as they significantly affect interstate commerce.
2. Secondly, the Court must consider not the effect of an individual act, but rather the cumulative effect of all similar instances when determining whether an activity affects interstate commerce.
3. Thirdly, the Constitution requires the judiciary to give a very deferential review of Congress’s determination that a regulation relates to its requirement of furthering and protecting interstate commerce.

Question 18

Aggregation Principle, Commerce N&P - Rational Basis

Gonzales v. Raich (+Con Scalia +Dis OConnor)

Answer 18

1. The Court held in Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942), that Congress has the power to regulate purely local activities that are part of an economic “class of activities” that have a substantial effect on interstate commerce.
2. In this case, Raich’s activity of growing marijuana for home use can be seen rationally as having a substantial effect on interstate commerce because there is an established, albeit illegal, interstate market for marijuana
3. valid exercise of Congress’s Commerce Clause power because Congress acted rationally in determining growing marijuana was an economic activity with a substantial effect on interstate commerce

Concurrence (Scalia, J.)
1. Congress’s power to regulate activities having a “substantial effect” on interstate commerce is derived not only from the Commerce Clause, but primarily from the Necessary and Proper Clause, which allows Congress to do whatever it deems necessary to accomplish its regulatory objectives.

Dissent (O’Connor, J.)
1. The majority’s decision essentially trumps states’ rights and federalism concerns, and it violates the previous decisions in Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995), and Morrison, 529 U.S. 598 (2000).
2. The majority’s decision risks opening the door for Congress to improperly regulate any intrastate activity deemed “essential” to interstate commerce.

Question 19

CC unallowed if destroy state sovereignty, State protected by structure

Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority

Answer 19

1. Congress has the constitutional authority to regulate the wages and hours of state employees under the Commerce Clause.
2. The states occupy a special and specific position in the constitutional system; the principal and basic limit on federal commerce power is that inherent in all congressional action is the build-in restraints that the system provides states through the participation in the federal government action
3. Additionally, systems to protect state sovereignty are already built into the structure of the federal government itself.
4. States play a significant role in electing representatives to the legislative and executive branches of the federal government. Elected representatives then continue to represent the interests of their states while in office.

Question 20

Violation of 10th State v. Federal Gov. Structrual Federalism

Printz v. United States

Answer 20

1. Congress may not compel state CLEOs to administer federal programs.
2. Firstly, no clear evidence exists that historical Congresses believed they had the power to compel state executives into federal service.
3. Secondly, the Constitution creates a system of dual sovereignty whereby the states and the federal government are independent entities with different governmental functions.
4. Thus, the Constitution’s structure suggests that it is inappropriate for the federal government to violate states’ status as separate entities by compelling their officials to perform federal roles.
5. Additionally, the Constitution clearly states the execution of the laws is the responsibility of the President.

Question 21

Spending Clause General Welfare

South Dakota v. Dole (4 part test)

Answer 21

1. Congress has specific constitutional power to tax and spend for the general welfare of the United States.
2. In exercising this spending power, Congress may condition the receipt of federal funds by states subject to the following four limitations:
   * the exercise of the spending power must be for the “general welfare;”
   * the conditions on the receipt of funds must be unambiguous;
   * conditions must be related to a federal interest in a particular national project or program;
   * and conditions must not violate any other constitutional provisions such as the Tenth Amendment.

Question 22

State Federalism, N&P + Tax/Spend

NFIB v. Sibelius (Roberts position, Scalia position, Ginsburg Position)

1. Tax powers: Indiv mandate
2. Commerce & N/P: Indiv mandate
3. Spending power: Medicaid Expansion
4. Severability

Answer 22

• Tax powers:mandate okay,
• Spend powers:mandate NO,
• Spending power:Medicaid Expansion NO,

1. (1) Is the individual mandate contained in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 a valid use of Congress’s power to tax?
   * Yes. The individual mandate contained in the Act is a valid use of Congress’s power to tax.
   * The individual mandate cannot be justified as a valid exercise of commerce power, because the Commerce Clause does not empower Congress to compel individuals to engage in commercial activity.
   * Further, the possibility that people could participate in the healthcare market at some point in the future is not enough.
   * This is a slippery slope that could open the door to congressional regulation of all sorts of activity or inactivity not contemplated by the Framers.
   * Because the tax is assessed just like other taxes, based on income, and collected by the IRS, the fact that Congress calls it a penalty is irrelevant.
2. (2) Is the Medicaid expansion provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 a constitutional use of Congress’s spending powers?
   * No. The Medicaid expansion provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 is an unconstitutional use of Congress’s spending powers.
   * With respect to the Medicaid extension, the federal government cannot withhold all existing Medicaid funding from states that choose not to participate.
   * the Act does not offer the states a genuine choice, because they need to accept a basic change in the nature of Medicaid or risk losing all Medicaid funding

Roberts
1. Individual Mandate (tax) - Tax, goes through irs and other similarities, Precedent allows tax to regulate activity, Labels don’t control (penalty v tax), If there is a reading of the statute that is permissible, go w/ that
2. Individual Mandate (Commerce + NPC) - 1. Regulating a class of people, not an activity, Also, if can compel activity via CC or NPC, many other powers are not necessary, Not everyone is in the healthcare market
3. Medicaid expansion - Completely coercive, b/c risk losing all medicaid funding
4. Severability - Yes, Keep it - can be implied

Scalia 4 Justices
1. Individual Mandate (tax) - Not a tax, a penalty, Individual mandate is not located in revenue portion of the act, Act itself calls it a penalty, Tax cannot be used to compel private conduct (Drexel)
2. Individual Mandate (Commerce + NPC) - This goes beyond Lopez which is the outer limit, violates federalism (state police power), and is not regulating a pre-existing activity - it is compelling it
3. Medicaid expansion - agrees with Roberts
4. Severability - No. Throw out act b/c no severability clause

Ginsburg 4 Justices
1. Individual Mandate (tax) - Fits w/in definition of a tax - collected by IRS and doesn’t apply to people below fed income and is used to generate income, Labels aren’t controlling, b/c otherwise Congress could sneak stuff in just by calling it X
2. Individual Mandate (Commerce + NPC) - States are incompetent to act separately (Bedford), everyone is going to consume healthcare (allowed to look at future market - Raich and Wickard)
3. Medicaid expansion - (Only Gisburg and Sotomayor) Never struck down spending b/c it is coercive before
4. Severability - Yes. Keep rest of constitutional act

Question 23

Natualization State v Congress

Dred Scott v. Sandford (+dis McLean & Curtis)

Answer 23

Taney, C.J.
1. In deciding that Scott and other persons of African descent, whether currently slaves or free, are not citizens of the United States and thus not entitled to Constitutional protections, an analysis is made starting with the characterization of persons in this category by the Framers of the Constitution.
2. At the time the Framers drafted the Constitution, the prevailing view in the United States was that people of African descent imported into the country as slaves were an inferior race and therefore not entitled to basic Constitutional protections, rights, and freedoms.
3. It does not necessarily follow that a person is entitled to all the protections afforded to a citizen of the United States because someone is a citizen of a particular state.
4. Applying these principles to the present case, although the Framers’ language in the Declaration of Independence stated that “all men are created equal,” the prevailing negative view of African Americans at the time of the Declaration’s drafting meant that the Framers could not have intended those words to apply to African Americans.

Dissent (McLean, J.)
1. Why should the considerations given to Missouri by the majority not also be conferred onto illinois?
2. Illinois in its state sovereignty has declared by law any slave brought into residency in its terrirotiy will be free
3. The majority relies on the return of Scott to missouri to maintain his status as enslaved, however, there isn’t evidence that he willfully returned to the state
4. Are the decisions of missouri court binding on the supreme
5. The court only follows state court decisions when they pertain to state statutes
6. The Supreme court of Missouri refused to notice the act of congress or the constitution of Illinois which Scott claimed his freedom from
7. If a state can disregard the authority of an act of congress or the sovereign constitution of another state what protection to the laws afford

Dissent (Curtis, J.)
1. The questions is whether any persons of african descent can be a citizen of the US – is such a person can be a citizen then the plaintiff has the right to judgment under the court
2. It is only necessary to know whether the persons were citizens of either of the states under the confederation at the time of the adoption of the constitution
3. At the time of the ratification of the AOC all free native-born inhabitants were not only citizens of the states but such of them as had the other necessary qualifications possessed the franchise of electors on equal terms with other citizens
4. There were in fact free persons of color in some of the several states at the time of the ratification of the AOC and therefore the Art. 4 of the AOC is not applicable as the majority would have it
5. Given that the constitution states that citizenship is through birth in the US, Congress only has the power to legislate the naturalization of foreigners; meaning nothing can be derived to inhibit the ability of people to claim citizenship

Question 24

Narrow Construction of 13th&14th - P&E

Slaughterhouse Cases (+Dis Field, Bradley, Swayne)

Answer 24

1. The Thirteenth Amendment was passed to specifically prohibit the evils of slavery as it existed during the pre-Civil War enslavement of Africans in the United States.
2. “Servitude” is a broader concept than “slavery,” but the inclusion of this term in the Thirteenth Amendment was solely for the purpose of forbidding any and all forms of African slavery in the future.
3. The Amendment was passed during the post-Civil War era when states enacted harsh and discriminatory legislation limiting the rights of newly-freed slaves.
4. The Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment only protects the privileges and immunities guaranteed by the United States and not by the individual states.
5. The rights guaranteed by the United States are very limited and historically do not include civil rights.

Dissent (Field, J.)
1. Fields interpretation of police powers – the landing and slaughtering of the animals and inspection of the animals for disease are police powers, however, the creation of monopolies are not a police power
2. The majority’s overly-narrow interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment virtually guts the Amendment of its protections.
3. Constitution does not contain any separate nationally-sanctioned privileges and immunities. Instead, all privileges and immunities protected by the amendment are derived from those protected by the states. Thus, it is incorrect for the majority to have held that the Fourteenth Amendment only guarantees national, and not state, protections.

Dissent (Bradley, J.)
1. It is within the rights and privileges guaranteed to every American to pursue whatever civil employment he or she chooses, subject to reasonable regulations by the legislature.
2. Due process – to require butchers to conduct their work in a slaughterhouse owned by another company and to require them to pay a fee to that company constitutes an impermissible restriction on their constitutional right to pursue whatever civil employment they choose.
3. References the Magna Carta

Dissent (Swayne, J.)
1. While the first eleven Amendments to the Constitution were enacted as limitations on federal government power, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments constitute limitations on powers traditionally exercised by states.
2. improper to narrowly construe the Fourteenth Amendment as only providing for rights guaranteed by the national government and not individual state governments,

Question 25

State Police Power v. 14th, Substantive Due Process

Lochner v. New York (+Dis Holmes)

Hint think Bakers

Answer 25

• May a state regulate the working hours of certain classes of workers without violating the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?
• A state may not regulate the working hours mutually agreed upon by employers and employees as this violates their Fourteenth Amendment right to contract freely under the Due Process Clause.

1. The general right of an employer to make a contract in relation to his business is part of the liberty of the individual protected by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
2. The right to purchase or to sell labor is part of the liberty protected by this Amendment, unless there are circumstances that exclude the right.
3. States may impose reasonable conditions on the right to contract that further the health, safety, and general welfare of their citizens.
4. Specifically, states have previously been permitted to regulate the hours of employees in the smelting and mining fields.
5. However, state police power is not absolute and must be balanced against individual liberty concerns protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Dissent (Holmes, J.)
1. However, the purpose of the United States Constitution is not to require states to exercise their police powers uniformly, but to instead give them the power to make their own judgments about what laws are best for their individual citizens.
2. The “liberty” protected by the Fourteenth Amendment should not function to prevent the exercise of a dominant opinion among states, that opinion being, in this case, that states can constitutionally regulate the work hours of employees within their borders.

Question 26

Priv Right cannot Eff Public Welfare, Reas e and Non-Arbitrary State Reg

Nebbia v. New York

Answer 26

May a state fix the price of goods sold within its borders without violating the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?

1. Yes. During the Great Depression, the price farmers received for milk was far below the cost of milk production. This discouraged farmers from producing milk, an essential item of a healthful diet.
2. The legislature thus determined, for the public good, it must set the price of milk to ensure farmers received a fair price for their product and continued to promote healthy diets by producing milk.
3. This interest in encouraging milk production was balanced against the individual interest in freedom from governmental interference in the making of contracts. **However, the freedom to contract is not absolute. **
4. The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not prevent states from enacting economic policies to promote the public good, as long as those policies are not unreasonable or arbitrary.

Question 27

Legitimate State Interest in Regulation

West Coast Hotel v. Parrish

Answer 27

May a state regulate the minimum wage paid to female employees?
1. Yes. Constitution, through its Fourteenth Amendment, clearly outlines the liberty interest of freedom from actions which attack an individual’s health, safety, or general welfare.
2. Thus, all asserted liberty interests are ultimately restrained by the health, safety, and general welfare interests that comprise due process.
3. States pass minimum wage laws designed to promote the health and safety of female employees, and this regulation thus embodies principles of due process.
4. To hold that states cannot regulate in this way would be to deny due process constraints on a state’s freedom to contract, and to deny protections for the health and safety of women.

Question 28

EPC Race, Reasonableness Regulation Okay

Plessy v. Ferguson (Harlan Dissent)

Answer 28

May a state enact a law providing for separate railway cars for Caucasian and African American persons without violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
1. Yes. While the object of the Fourteenth Amendment is to promote the equality of all races before the law, it cannot have been intended to abolish all distinctions based on color, or to enforce social (as opposed to political) equality when African Americans and Caucasians do not actually want to be commingled.
2. Laws permitting or requiring the separation of the two races are supported by precedent and do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other.
3. The distinction does not imply racial inferiority or violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because the railway cars of the two races in the present case are separate but equal.

Dissent (Harlan, J.)
1. Purposive: the whole point of the statute was to compel one race to keep to themselves, and it is a direct violation of the 14th; raises and anti-precedent argument pointing out the case law that has been overturned and the similarities with the present case
2. A legislative body or judicial tribunal should not consider the race of citizens when making legislative decisions about civil rights of those citizens.
3. In this case, the consideration of race violates both concepts of equal rights and personal liberty interests.
4. The Constitution itself is color-blind, and the Louisiana law and the majority’s decision both misinterpret the civil rights protections embodied in the Constitution.

Question 29

Sep but Eq. OT, Effects of Segregation literally impair POC students

Brown v. Board of Education (Brown I)

Answer 29

Whether the segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other tangible factors are equal, deprives the children of the minority group of educational opportunities in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
1. Yes. In deciding the issue it is not possible to rely on the original intent surrounding adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment because prior cases and the legislative history involved in its enactment are inconclusive as to the true extent of its meaning.
2. Additionally, it is not helpful to look at the status of public education at the time the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, as most Caucasian children were then educated by private schools, and most African American children were not educated at all.
3. In the present case, all basic attributes of the Caucasian and African American schools are essentially the same.
4. To determine whether the segregated schools violate the Fourteenth Amendment as interpreted, it is necessary to examine the actual effect of this segregation on the institution of public education as a whole.
**5. Modern studies confirm that the children experiencing segregation feel inferior, become less motivated, and perform at a lower standard than children that do not experience segregation.
**

Question 30

SCOTUS ruling Art VI Supreme Law

Cooper v. Aaron

Answer 30

Whether state officials are bound by federal court orders based on the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the United States Constitution.
1. State officials and state legislatures must comply with orders of the United States Supreme Court based on its interpretation of the United States Constitution. Article VI of the Constitution makes the Constitution the “supreme Law of the Land.”
2. In Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (Cranch 1) 137 (1803), the Court held that the federal judiciary, and particularly the United States Supreme Court, has final authority in interpreting the Constitution, or saying “what the law is.”

Question 31

EPC IR Marriage Strict Scrutiny

Loving v. Virginia

Answer 31

May a state enact a statute that prevents marriages between persons solely on the basis of racial classification without violating the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment?
1. No. State bans on interracial marriages were passed as a reaction to slavery and have been present since the colonial period.
2. Virginia’s statute is motivated solely to restrict marriage based on race, and by precedent, such laws have been found to be a threat to equality.
3. At the very least such race-based classifications are subject to strict scrutiny and cannot be upheld unless they are shown to accomplish a permissible state objective independent of the racial discrimination.
4. In the present case, there is no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination that justifies Virginia’s classification.

Question 32

Strict Scrutiny Racial Class., Dispro Impact + Invidious discrimination

Washington v. Davis

Answer 32

Whether the test used by the Washington, D.C. police department to screen new employees violates the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause.
1. A state-sponsored racial classification violates the equal protection provisions in the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause only if it is shown to have both a disproportionate impact on a particular race and is motivated by invidious racial discrimination.
2. The purpose of the Equal Protection Clause is to prevent official conduct that discriminates on the basis of race.
3. However, the Court has never adopted a rule which invalidates official conduct that merely has a disproportionate impact on a particular racial group without evidence of a discriminatory purpose.
4. A discriminatory purpose can be inferred from the totality of the facts, including the fact that a law burdens one race more heavily than another.
5. However, the mere instance of a disproportionate impact does not, without more, trigger strict scrutiny by the courts.

Question 33

MvW Alcohol, Intermediate Scrutiny State Interest + Substantially Relate

Craig v. Boren

Answer 33

Whether a statute that denies the sale of alcohol to individuals of the same age based solely on gender violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
1. A governmental regulation involving gender discrimination is constitutional if it is substantially related to the achievement of an important government purpose.
2. Yes. The appropriate standard of review for governmental gender-based classifications is intermediate scrutiny.
3. While the difference is statistically significant, it is not enough to justify a broad categorical rule prohibiting the sale of alcohol to males, and not females, in this age group.
4. No justification exists for enacting a gender-based law governing the sale of this particular beer and not alcohol in general to males and females between ages eighteen and twenty.

Question 34

EPC 14th

Gordon v. Jordan School District

Answer 34

1. Plaintiffs challenged Defendants’ failure to sanction and offer girls tackle football as a high school sport, asserting a violation of the Equal Protection Clause and various claims under Title IX.
2. Following two summary judgment rulings that substantially narrowed the issues before the court, the only claims that remain pending are Plaintiffs’ Equal Protection claim against all Defendants and their Title IX claims under the effective accommodation and contact sport rules against Jordan and Granite School Districts.

Question 35

EP Abortion, Substantive Due Process

Roe v. Wade (+Dis Rehnquist)

Answer 35

Does the constitutional right to privacy protect a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion?
1. The constitutional right to privacy protects a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion.
2. However, abortions may be regulated by a state after the first trimester of pregnancy and may be completely prohibited after the point of “viability” of a fetus unless necessary to preserve the health of the mother.
3. Historically, women have had a greater right to terminate their pregnancies than they currently enjoy.
**4. There are three reasons for the gradual increase in strictness in anti-abortion laws. **
* Firstly, decreasing the availability of abortion is seen as a way to decrease illicit sexual activity.
* Secondly, concerns over the safety of abortion procedures prompted a decrease in its prevalence to protect the health of women.
* Finally, states increasingly note their own interest or duty in protecting prenatal life.
5. The “zone of privacy” implied in the Constitution is broad enough to encompass a woman’s right to choose to terminate her pregnancy.
6. Regulation limiting a “fundamental right” of privacy must be justified by a compelling state interest, and legislative enactments must be narrowly tailored to further that interest.
7. Thus, state interests grow in substantiality as the woman approaches term and, at a certain point during pregnancy, became compelling enough to override her general right to privacy.
* With respect to the state’s interest in protecting the health of the mother, the interest becomes compelling at approximately the end of the first trimester (first three months of pregnancy), when performance of an abortion becomes increasingly risky.
* A state’s interest in protecting potential life becomes compelling at viability, or whenever the fetus is capable of a meaningful life outside the mother’s womb.
* A state can prohibit abortion after viability, except when it is necessary to protect the life of the mother.

Dissent (Rehnquist, J.)
1. The constitutional right of privacy is not implicated in the present case.
2. The Texas statute bars a licensed physician from performing a medical procedure on a woman.
3. Such a transaction is not “private” in the traditional sense of the word.
4. The majority’s sweeping invalidation of any restrictions on abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy ignores any state interest in the potential life of the fetus and is impossible to justify under a rational basis standard.
5. In addition, the entire trimester system itself, as defined by the majority, is reflective more of a legislative than a judicial judgment.
6. The majority creates a right that does not exist in the Fourteenth Amendment. All regulation powers over abortion should be left entirely to state legislatures

Question 36

Stare Decisis, Overrule Roe weakening 14th EPC

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (+Con Roberts, Kav, Thoma +Dis Breyer) 5 causes for going against Stare Decisis?

Answer 36

(1) Does the United States Constitution confer a right to abortion?
1. No. The United States Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. Because the Constitution does not expressly mention an abortion right, the question becomes whether that right is implied by the Constitution’s language.
2. In determining what the Fourteenth Amendment means by liberty, and thus, whether a purported right is constitutionally protected, this Court’s substantive-due-process analysis examines whether the right at issue is “deeply rooted” in American “history and tradition” and essential to the American “scheme of ordered liberty.”
* Here, a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in American history and tradition. Prior to Roe, abortion had been prohibited and criminalized, historically at common law and subsequently by statute.
* Abortion is distinct from other rights purportedly rooted in privacy and autonomy because of the moral questions raised by ending fetal life.
* Because the Constitution does not confer an abortion right, power must be returned to the states for the people, through their elected representatives, to determine how abortion should be regulated.
(2) May the Supreme Court overrule a wrongly decided constitutional decision?
1. Yes. The Supreme Court may overrule a wrongly decided constitutional decision.
2. deciding to overrule a constitutional decision is serious and requires examining factors including .
* (1) the nature of the error in the prior decision,
* (2) the quality of the decision’s reasoning,
* (3) the workability of the rule announced by the decision,
* (4) the disruptive effect of the decision on other areas of law, and
* (5) the absence of concrete reliance on the decision.

Concurrence (Roberts, C.J.)
1. The judgment is correct, but the Court should have decided the constitutionality of the Mississippi statute simply by discarding the viability rule established by Roe and Casey.
2. The Court did not need to go further and eliminate the abortion right entirely. The Court’s decision to overrule Roe and Casey violates principles of judicial restraint that caution against deciding more than is necessary to resolve a case.
3. Viability rule doesn’t work in Roe
4. Right at issue is the woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy

Concurrence (Kavanaugh, J.)
1. The constitution is neutral on the grounds of abortion; there are two sides of the issue and where the constitution doesn’t provide a forn of relief then the people through their states should figure it out – Courts shouldn’t be making up new rights &Court shouldn’t be policymaking
2. The Constitution itself neither prohibits nor permits abortion.
3. Nor does this decision allow states to bar residents from traveling to other states to obtain an abortion or to retroactively punish someone who previously obtained an abortion.
4. This decision simply means that this Court is no longer the decisionmaker about when abortion should be legal. That choice has rightfully been restored to the states.

Concurrence (Thomas, J.)
1. No such thing as substantive due process → its not specifically enumerated therefore it doesn’t exist; Puts judges above the people and nullifies the madisonian process; we don’t want judicial policy making & Distorts other areas of constitutional law & It’s used for disastrous ends
2. Substantive due process is a dangerous legal fiction that has improperly allowed judges to make policy and negatively impacted the Court’s constitutional-law jurisprudence.
3. Because any previous decision purportedly based on substantive due process is erroneous, the Court must correct those decisions in the future.

Dissent (Breyer, J.)
1. Roe and Casey protected women’s rights to exercise control over their lives and bodies. The balance struck in these decisions respected women’s autonomy and advanced women’s equality, while recognizing states’ legitimate interests in protecting fetal life.
2. Attacking originalism and the reinforcement of a living constitutionalist approach
3. 14th was ratified by men so the rights for women’s liberty or their capacity to participate as equal members of the nation
4. The framers consigned women to a second-class citizen at the ratification of the constitution
5. The framers understood that the world changes and intentionally defined rights in general terms to allow the evolution of their scope
6. Decision implicates other rights
7. Assumes wealth and will particularly hurt economically disadvantaged
8. States and feds would criminalize abortion
9. Not neutral curtails women’s rights and denigrates their status

Question 37

1st amend only precluded with actual malice everything goes

New York Times Co. v. Sullivan

Answer 37

Whether a state law for civil liability that disregards intention abridges the freedom of speech and press guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments when applied to an action brought by a public official against critics of his official conduct.
1. The rule of law announced by the Alabama courts is constitutionally deficient because it fails to provide safeguards for the freedom of speech and freedom of press required by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
2. It is well established that there is a profound national commitment in America to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on the government and public officials.
3. Since both false and defamatory speech relating to public officials is individually protected, the First Amendment also protects the combination of the two.
**4. The only proper way to guarantee that the protections of freedom of speech and of the press are not ignored in civil libel actions is to adopt a federal rule that prohibits a public official from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves that the statement was made with actual malice.
**

Question 38

1st amend stands unless false statement+actual malice

Hustler Magazine v. Falwell

Answer 38

May a public figure recover damages for intentional infliction of emotional distress due to publication of a parody or satire without showing that the publication contained a false statement of fact made with actual malice?
1. One of the rights of American citizenship is the right to criticize public figures, which means that public officials and public figures may sometimes be subject to “vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks.”
2. However, in matters relating to public officials and public figures, the First Amendment prohibits assigning liability for intentional infliction of emotional distress due to publication of a caricature or parody without a showing that the publication contained a false statement of fact made with actual malice, i.e., with knowledge that the statement was false or with reckless disregard to its truth or falsehood.
3. Holding otherwise would unnecessarily assign damages awards to political cartoonists and satirists for caricatures that inevitably play up negative features of their subjects.