Supreme Court Cases #2

Question 1

Roe v. Wade

Answer 1

Concepts: Abortion/Right of Privacy v. State Rights/Reserve Powers

Issue
Whether state law, which bans or regulates abortion, violates a woman’s right to privacy or personal choice in matters of family decisions or marriage.

Precedent
Women have the private right to choose to have an abortion during the first trimester.
States may regulate abortion in the second trimester.
At the viability stage, the child’s rights are protected and abortions are no longer a private right.

Question 2

Dred Scott v. Sanford

Answer 2

Concepts: Slavery/Question of Citizenship v. Fifth Amendment/Property Rights

Issue
Whether Dred Scott, a slave, was a citizen of the United States and legally entitled to use the courts to sue.

Precedent
Established that slaves were not citizens and had not rights or protection under the Constitution.
Slaves were considered property.

Question 3

Plessy v. Ferguson

Answer 3

Concepts: Separate But Equal/Equal Protection v. State Rights

Issue
Whether laws, which provided for the separation of races, violated the rights of blacks as guaranteed by the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Precedent
Established the doctrine of Separate But Equal. As long as facilities and rights were equal, then separation was allowed.

Question 4

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka

Answer 4

Concepts: School Segregation/Equal Protection v. State Rights

Issue
Whether segregation of children in public schools denies blacks their Fourteenth Amendment right of equal protection under the law.

Precedent
Overturned the doctrine of Separate But Equal.
Separate educational facilities were held to be “inherently unequal.”

Question 5

Dennis v. United States

Answer 5

Concepts: Overthrow of Government/Free Speech v. National Security

Issue
Whether the Smith Act violated the First Amendment provision for freedom of speech or the Fifth Amendment due process clause.

Precedent
The right to free speech may be lifted if the speech presents a clear and present danger to overthrow any government in the United States by force or violence.

Question 6

United States v. Nixon

Answer 6

Concepts: Watergate/Federal Due Process v. Executive Privilege

Issue
Whether the United States violated President Nixon’s constitutional right of executive power, his need for confidentiality, his need to maintain the separation of powers, and his executive privilege to immunity from any court demands for information and evidence.

Precedent
Presidential power is not above the law. It cannot protect evidence that may be used in a criminal trial.

Question 7

Obergefell v. Hodges

Answer 7

ruled that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The ruling meant that all fifty states must lawfully perform and recognize the marriages of same-sex couples on the same terms and conditions as the marriages of opposite-sex couples, with all the accompanying rights and responsibilities

Question 8

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization 2021

Answer 8

In 2018, Mississippi passed a law called the “Gestational Age Act,” which prohibits all abortions, with few exceptions, after 15 weeks’ gestational age.