Final review Flashcards
Roe v. Wade (1973)
The court ruled that a woman’s right to an abortion fell within the right to privacy protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits states from “depriv[ing] any person of liberty without due process of law.”
-Case facts: In 1970, Jane Roe filed a lawsuit against Henry Wade, the district attorney of Dallas County, Texas, where she resided, challenging a Texas law making abortion illegal except by a doctor’s orders to save a woman’s life. In her lawsuit, Roe alleged that the state laws were unconstitutionally vague and abridged her right of personal privacy, protected by the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments.
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
The court held that state-mandated segregation laws did not violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
-maintained the separate but equal notion–> Segregation constitutional so long as separate facilities were equal
-Case facts:
Louisiana enacted the Separate Car Act, which required separate railway cars for blacks and whites. In 1892, Homer Plessy – who was seven-eighths Caucasian – agreed to participate in a test to challenge the Act. He was solicited by the Comite des Citoyens (Committee of Citizens), a group of New Orleans residents who sought to repeal the Act. They asked Plessy, who was technically black under Louisiana law, to sit in a “whites only” car of a Louisiana train.
The railroad cooperated because it thought the Act imposed unnecessary costs via the purchase of additional railroad cars. When Plessy was told to vacate the whites-only car, he refused and was arrested.
At trial, Plessy’s lawyers argued that the Separate Car Act violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. The judge found that Louisiana could enforce this law insofar as it affected railroads within its boundaries. Plessy was convicted.
dynamic court view
belief that courts are successful agents in producing social change
–>judges, as unelected officials, are able to make decisions that elected representatives may want to avoid for political reasons.
American Bar Association (ABA)
a national organization of lawyers. the purpose was to improve the administration of justice, provide for a uniform approach to the law in the various states, uphold the honor of the legal profession, and encourage friendly relations between lawyers
–> originally exclusionary organization intent on limiting access to the profession by immigrants and religious and racial minorities.
–> perpetuates unequal demographics: <10% of other ethnicities, 81% white (19% POC in legal profession as a whole), 61.5 % male v 31.3% female
—-> 5.35% LGBTQ identifying, 1.25% have a disability, median age 46.5
Originalism
the belief that a text should be interpreted in a way consistent with how it would have been understood or was intended to be understood at the time it was written.
–> conservative judges such as Barrett, Thomas, Gorsuch follow this principle
–> originalists argue that the meaning of the constitutional text is fixed and that it should bind constitutional actors
Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina (2022)
Courts sided w/ UNC, and concluded the admissions office uses race in a limited, permissible fashion and that race is not the dominant factor in decisions about academically qualified applicants.
-Case facts:
Petitioner Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) sued the University of North Carolina (UNC) over its admissions process, alleging that the process violates the Fourteenth Amendment by using race as a factor in admissions. UNC admits that it uses race as one of many factors in its admissions process but argues that its process adheres to the requirements for race-based admissions outlined in the Supreme Court’s decision in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003).
Obergefell et al. v. Hodges, et al.
The Court held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees the right to marry as one of the fundamental liberties it protects, and that analysis applies to same-sex couples in the same manner as it does to opposite-sex couples. Judicial precedent has held that the right to marry is a fundamental liberty because it is inherent to the concept of individual autonomy, it protects the most intimate association between two people, it safeguards children and families by according legal recognition to building a home and raising children, and it has historically been recognized as the keystone of social order. Because there are no differences between a same-sex union and an opposite-sex union with respect to these principles, the exclusion of same-sex couples from the right to marry violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment also guarantees the right of same-sex couples to marry as the denial of that right would deny same-sex couples equal protection under the law.
-Case facts:
Groups of same-sex couples sued their relevant state agencies in Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee to challenge the constitutionality of those states’ bans on same-sex marriage or refusal to recognize legal same-sex marriages that occurred in jurisdictions that provided for such marriages. The plaintiffs in each case argued that the states’ statutes violated the Equal Protection Clause and Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and one group of plaintiffs also brought claims under the Civil Rights Act.
–>Obergefell v. Kasich
Rule of Four
the Supreme Court’s unwritten practice of granting a petition for review only if there are at least four votes to do so
-requires four of the nine Supreme Court judges to vote to hear a case. A petition that fails to attract four judges is denied, and the lower court’s decision stands.
-the court can grant review and hear oral argument even if a five-justice majority of the court prefers not to do so.
Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder (2012)
requires certain states and local governments to obtain federal preclearance before implementing any changes to their voting laws or practices; and Section 4(b), which contains the coverage formula that determines which jurisdictions are subject to preclearance based on their histories of discrimination in voting
–> Section 4(B) defined eligible districts as those with the voting test as of 11/1/1964 and a less than 50% turnout rate
Case facts:
-the Court ruled by a 5 to 4 vote that Section 4(b) was unconstitutional because the coverage formula was based on data over 40 years old, making it no longer responsive to current needs and therefore an impermissible burden on the constitutional principles of federalism and equal sovereignty of the states
–> violated 10th Amendment & Article 4
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Brown II*
1955 issued a judgment that said that school systems must desegregate with “all deliberate speed.”
The Voting Rights Act (1965)
act that outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting
-significance: increased African American voting registration and broke the back of white domination of the political process.
–> 27% increase in voter turnout
negative rights
rights based on the absence of governmental action
-right not to be subjected to an action of another person or group such as a government, usually occurring in the form of abuse or coercion.
- exist unless someone acts to negate them.
-ex: the right to privacy, the right not to be killed, or the right to do what one wants with one’s property
positive rights
rights that provide something that people need to secure their well being
-rights whose implementation requires government action
-ex: right to an education, the right to food, the right to medical care, the right to housing, or the right to a job.
Legal Services Corporation
publicly funded, 501 non-profit corporation established by the United States Congress in 1974, ensures equal access to justice under the law for all Americans by providing funding for civil legal aid to those who otherwise would be unable to afford it.
-created to ensure legal services were removed from direct control of the president & couldn’t be eliminated with the stroke of a pen
-directors appointed by pres & had authority to pick & chooselimited access to legal aid lawyers funded by corp
–link to right to counsel
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health (2021)
eliminated the constitutional right to abortion by overruling Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey precedents. Jackson Women’s Health argued that abortion is granted in the 14th Amendment. The five factors that should be considered in deciding whether a precedent should be overruled support overruling Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey: (1) they “short-circuited the democratic process,” (2) both lacked grounding in constitutional text, history, or precedent, (3) the tests they established were not “workable,” (4) they caused distortion of law in other areas, and (5) overruling them would not upend concrete reliance interests.
-Case facts: Mississippi passed a law called the “Gestational Age Act,” which prohibits all abortions, with few exceptions, after 15 weeks’ gestational age. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the only licensed abortion facility in Mississippi, and one of its doctors filed a lawsuit in federal district court challenging the law and requesting an emergency temporary restraining order
–vs. Thomas Dobbs, State Health Officer of the Mississippi Department of Health
