Supreme Court Cases (Civil Liberties)

Question 1

Engle v Vitale

Answer 1

reading a nondenominational prayer at the start of the school day violates the establishment of religion clause of the First Amendment

Question 2

Lemon v Kurtzman

Answer 2

• Lemon Test
• legislation must have a secular purpose and it must avoid excessive entanglement of government with religion
• government could not provide aid to private schools (this violated the first amendment)

Question 3

Lee v Weisman

Answer 3

school officials can’t invite clergy to recite prayers at graduation ceremonies

Question 4

Schenck v United States

Answer 4

Justice Holmes ruled that Schneck did not have the right to print, speak, and distribute materials against United States efforts in WWI because a “clear and present danger” existed

Question 5

Chaplinsky v New Hamsphire

Answer 5

• fighting words are intended to incite breach of peace or inflict injury and they are not protected by the First Amendment
• Chaplinsky called a city marshal “a god damned fascist”

Question 6

New York Times v Sullivan

Answer 6

• created base definition of what constitutes libel
• NYT published an ad that said the arrest of Martin Luther King was part of a campaign to destroy his efforts in civil rights
• first amendment protects all statements, even false ones, with the exception of knowledge that they are false, disregard of the truth)

Question 7

Tinker v Des Moines

Answer 7

• gave students the right to wear black armbands in silent protest of the Vietnam War
• it was a legitimate form of symbolic speech
• these rights were later restricted in Hazelwood v Kuhlmeier when school administrators gained the right to censor a school newspaper

Question 8

New York Times v United States

Answer 8

• New York Times published the Pentagon Papers
• government did not have the right to prevent the NYT from printing information about the history of the country’s involvement in the Vietnam War

Question 9

Texas v Johnson

Answer 9

• Johnson burned a flag outside the Republican National Convention in protest of the president’s foreign policy
• this was ruled as a form of symbolic speech protected by the First Amendment

Question 10

McConnell v Federal Election Commission

Answer 10

ban on soft money and the restrictions placed on television ads did not violate free speech

Question 11

DeJonge v Oregon

Answer 11

• Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause applies to freedom of assembly
• DeJonge had the right to organize a Communist Party
• in the 1950s, there was a fear of communism and in Dennis v United Sttaes, Dennis violated the Smith Act by advocating the forcible overthrow of the government

Question 12

Mapp v Ohio

Answer 12

evidence that was obtained in violation of the constitutional rights can’t be used in court

Question 13

Griswold v Connecticut

Answer 13

• Court struck down a law that prohibited the use of contraceptives
• individuals have the right to privacy in the area of sexual relations (privacy provision of the 14th Amendment)

Question 14

United States v Leon

Answer 14

• created an exception to the exclusionary rule
• allowed the introduction of illegally obtained evidence where police can prove that evidence was obtained without violating the core principles of Mapp v Ohio

Question 15

Planned Parenthood v Casey

Answer 15

• upheld a Pennsylvania law that required minors to wait 24 hrs after parental consent of abortion as constitutional
• women can’t be required to get spouse consent
• undue burden

Question 16

Reynolds v United States

Answer 16

• Reynold was a Mormon who practiced polygamy, which violated U.S. law
• he could not use the argument that this was his religious duty
• U.S. law comes first before religious practices if the two are in conflict

Question 17

Oregon v Smith

Answer 17

• Smiths were Native Americans who used peyote (drug)
• Oregon drug law that prohibited the consumption of illegal drugs for sacramental religious use did not violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment

Question 18

Wisconsin v Yoder

Answer 18

Amish children can be pulled out of school; they can’t be required by law to attend school past 14 yrs old

Question 19

New York v Quarles

Answer 19

police can arrest an accused criminal without reading the rights where public safety is threatened

Question 20

Gregg v Georgia

Answer 20

death sentence is not a cruel or unusual punishment

Question 21

Lawrence v Texas

Answer 21

struck down Texas law that criminalized homosexual sex

Question 22

Gonzales v Oregon

Answer 22

federal government could not block the Oregon’s Assisted Suicide Law by moving against physicians who assisted terminally ill patients by giving them medicine that enabled them to commit suicide

Question 23

Gitlow v New York

Answer 23

• established selective incorporation
• states can’t deny freedom of speech
• Gitlow was arrested for calling for the establishment of socialism in America