US SC key cases Flashcards
Marbury V Madison
1803
Background: Marbury was a judge who had been appointed by outgoing President Adams, but incoming President Jefferson asked his Secretary of State Madison to reverse the appointment. Marbury appealed to the SC.
Ruling: The SC found in favour of Marbury and said the 1789 Judiciary Act setting up the SC was in part unconstitutional because it did not authorise the SC to strike down executive or legislature acts, ie had wrongly not given the SC power of judicial review (judicial review is defined as the power of the SC to declare acts of branches of federal or state governments unconstitutional). Marshall’s judgement was in effect declaring the SC had that right from now on. Probably the only way the other two branches could have challenged this is via constitutional amendment, which they chose not to do.
Fletcher V Peck
1810
Background: Georgia state seized Native American land and sold it to speculators. Several Georgia state legislators were found to have been bribed in the land sale and the newly elected state legislature passed an act repealing the land sale and declaring sales that had taken place void. Peck had sold some of his land on to Fletcher so Fletcher, now finding his purchase had been declared void, sued Peck.
Ruling: The SC judged that the state of Georgia had violated respect for contracts enshrined in Article I of the constitution. This case established the precedent of the SC being able to declare states’ acts unconstitutional.
Pollock V Farmers’ Loan and Trust Company
1895
Background: Congress levied income tax via the Wilson Gorman Tariff Act 1894, the first time the federal government had imposed an income tax (except for a brief period during the civil war).
Ruling: The SC argued the constitution said that any direct tax levied by federal layer had to be apportioned among the states according to representation in the House of Representatives. This requirement of the constitution is in practice difficult for federal government to achieve. The Pollock judgement therefore had the effect of preventing federal governments from levying income taxes for the next 18 years. This SC judgement was overridden by the passing of the 16th amendment in 1913, giving the federal government the right to levy income tax.
Roe V Wade
1973
Background: Norma McCorvey (given pseudonym Jane Roe) denied abortion by Texas (district attorney Wade).
Ruling: SC struck down the abortion restrictions in new Texas state law. SC said 14th Amendment right of liberty includes ‘freedom of personal choice in the right of a woman to decide whether or not to terminate her pregnancy’. Case established federal right to abortion.
Bush V Gore
2000
Background: State of Florida’s votes in the electoral college held the key to who won the 2020 presidential election. Bush was ahead on current counts but lots of dispute about faulty ballot papers. Florida SC wanted to conduct a recount.
Ruling: SC ruled Florida could not recount. Bush won the election.
Citizens United (right wing pressure group) V Federal Election Commission
2010
Background: Citizens United was a conservative pressure group that wanted to air a critical film about Hilary Clinton just before the primaries, which a congressional act, the Bi-partisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 forbade.
Rulings: The SC said the Act violated Citizens United’s first amendment right to free speech, striking down that part of the act. The ruling also paved the way for political action committees (PACs) to be set up to raise unlimited amounts for funding campaigns.
National Federation of Independent Business V Sebelius (US sec of state for health)
2012
Background: Florida and the NFIB challenged the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), saying it restricted state power in healthcare policy.
Ruling: Chief Justice Roberts and the four liberal justices ruled that the federal government was using the mandatory health insurance as a kind of tax, which it has the constitutional right to levy. If the SC had found against the government, it would have been hugely controversial, given how central healthcare was to Obama’s mandate as President.
McCutcheon V Federal Election Commission
2014
Background: Shane McCutcheon wanted to donate to a political campaign above a cap that had been set in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, which had aimed to reduce super wealthy people having control over campaigns.
Ruling: The SC struck out the aspect of the Bipartisan Reform Act that set an aggregate cap limiting the amount an individual could contribute, although maintained a cap on how much an individual could contribute to an individual campaign. Chief Justice Roberts ‘There is no right more basic in our delivery than the right to participate in electing our political leaders’. Obama railed against both this and the Citizens United v Federal Election Commission ruling, arguing Congress should re-enact the legislation, but they refused, and the SC judgements stand.
Obergefell V Hodges
2015
Background: Jim Obergefell married his partner John Arthur but there were still some legal doubts as to the status of gay marriage.
Ruling: Lower court cases said state bans on same sex marriage were a violation of the 14th amendment forbidding states from denying equal protection of the law to any person within their jurisdiction. The SC agreed. As there is no mention of same sex right to marriage in the constitution, this is a good example of the SC engaging in loose construction/living constitution, as well as being liberal.
United States V Texas
2016
Background: Concerns Obama policy, Deferred Action for Parents of Aliens (DAPA), which links with one of his other policies, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). [NB An earlier version of DACA was DREAM Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act]. DAPA allows illegal immigrant parents of lawful residents to have indefinite right not to be deported. Obama had failed to get congressional action on DAPA so issued an executive order in 2014 to achieve his aim. Texas argued Obama could not implement such a momentous change in policy without Congress.
Ruling: Federal appeals court found the President had breached Article II ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed’. When it came to the SC, they only had 8 judges at the time (one had just died) and it was tied, therefore the appeals court ruling stood. Biggest legal defeat Obama suffered.
Trump V Hawaii
2018
Background: Lower federal courts ruled Trump’s ban on people entering the US from seven foreign countries was unconstitutional, because nearly all the countries were Muslim, violating constitutional commitment to freedom of religion.
Ruling: SC upheld the ban arguing it was not specifically directed at Muslims.
Kelly (Republican Rep, Mike Kelley) V Pennsylvania and Texas V Pennsylvania
2020
These two cases reached the SC alleging Democrat fraud in the 2020 election. Despite conservative majority, the SC refused to hear them both on grounds of lack of legal evidence.
Dobbs V Jackson Women’s Health
2022
Background: (shortened as we will cover this ruling in depth) The plaintiff Thomas Dobbs, Official with Mississippi Health Department, had passed a law restricting abortion.
Ruling: In 2021 the SC started to hear the case. They wrote a majority ruling that was leaked to the press and then this ruling was formally published in June 2022. By ruling in favour of Dobbs and the state’s right to limit abortions, the SC overturned the previous ruling they had made in 1973.
West Virginia V Environmental Protection Agency
2022
Background: there is growing conservative support for a legal theory known as the “major questions” doctrine, the idea that if Congress wants to give a federal agency the authority to make decisions with “vast economic and political significance,” it must clearly say so.
Ruling: The supreme court reversed a lower-court ruling that had interpreted the Clean Air Act to give the EPA expansive powers over carbon emissions. Chief Justice Roberts said “Capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity may be a sensible ‘solution to the crisis of the day,’” but Congress had not specifically given the EPA the power to make a “decision of such magnitude and consequence.” The liberal minority justices countered that Congress had intended for the EPA, with its expertise on environmental issues, to make precisely these kinds of decisions. Kagan did not mince words, arguing that the majority’s ruling “prevents congressionally authorized agency action to curb power plants’ carbon dioxide emissions. The Court appoints itself – instead of Congress or the expert agency – the decision-maker on climate policy. I cannot think of many things more frightening.”
New York Rile and Pistol Association V Bruen
2022
Background: A New York handgun-licensing law required New Yorkers who wanted to carry a handgun in public to show a special need to defend themselves. Bruen was the court’s first major ruling on gun rights in over a decade. The court had ruled in Heller v DC that the Second Amendment protects the right to have a firearm in the home and in McDonald v City of Chicago that both states and the federal government must respect that right. But in the 12 intervening years, the justices had repeatedly turned down requests to weigh in on laws like New York’s about guns in public places. Six months after the arrival of Coney Barrett in the fall of 2020the justices announced that they would review the New York law.
Ruling: When the Supreme Court issued its ruling in the case on June 23 2022 the decision was noteworthy not only because it struck down the New York law, which mirrored similar restrictions in California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, but for its methodology. Rejecting the two-part test that many lower courts have used to evaluate challenges to gun-control measures, the court outlined a new and more stringent standard for courts to use going forward. A restriction passes constitutional muster, Justice Clarence Thomas explained, only if there is a history or tradition of such regulations in U.S. history. Therefore, this ruling is a good example of originalist, strict constructionist interpretations of the literal text of the constitution.
Plessy V Ferguson
1896
Background: Plessy was of mixed white/African-American heritage who tried to board a whites only train car in Louisiana, violating that state’s ‘Separate Car Act’ of 1890 requiring ‘separate but equal’ rail accommodation. Ferguson was the Judge who prosecuted Plessy, refuting his claim that the Act was unconstitutional.
Ruling: Plessy appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896, which ruled 7-1 that racial segregation laws like Louisiana’s did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, effectively endorsing the “separate but equal” doctrine. The Supreme Court’s decision against Plessy was on the basis that the Louisiana law did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution because although the Fourteenth Amendment established the legal equality of whites and blacks, it did not and could not require the elimination of all “distinctions based upon color”. The decision legitimized the many state laws re-establishing racial segregation that had been passed in the American South after the end of the Reconstruction era (1865–1877).
Brown V the Education Board of Topeka
1954
Background: African American Reverend Oliver Brown wanted his daughter to have access to a wider range of schools. He challenged the local Board of Education who were effectively maintaining segregated schools, justifying their policy as following the Plessy v Ferguson ‘separate but equal’ doctrine.
Ruling: In one of the most landmark of all SC rulings, the early Warren SC reversed Plessy v Ferguson, outlawing racial segregation in public schools.
Shelby County V Holder
2013
Background: The 1965 Voting Rights Act had established a formula for preclearance whereby districts with discrepancies in black/white registration/turnout have to submit to some federal scrutiny.
Ruling: the Roberts court said preclearance was unconstitutional and no longer necessary as discriminatory practices were no longer significant, as evidenced by the fact that a black person, Barack Obama, had been elected president. Following the ruling immediate steps were taken by states like Texas to pass voter ID laws which some argue discriminate against black voters. In Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams argues the state has introduced measures to suppress black registration/turnout and she fought hard to encourage black voters, being held partly responsible for Georgia turning to the Democrats in the 2020 presidential election. In 2021 Biden passed the ‘For the People Act’ to curtail voter suppression.
Students for Fair Admissions V Harvard
2023
Many cases, eg Fisher v University of Texas 2016, had been brought to the SC against affirmative action, on the grounds that it discriminates against whites when the 14th amendment says there should be no discrimination (equal protection by the law). But the SC had always upheld affirmative action until this case in 2023.
Snyder V Phelps
2011
Snyder was a soldier killed on duty whose funeral was piucketed by Phelps, leader of a cult called the Westborough Baptist Church. They believe US soldiers are killed because of reasons such as that God punishes the US military for tolerating homosexuality. Snyder’s parents wanted to restrict their free speech but the SC ruled against them
Miranda V Arizona
1966
Fifth amendment right to silence the ‘Miranda’ ruling has been eroded somewhat recently.
Carpenter V United States
2018
Background: Carpenter was convicted of a robbery after the government obtained his cell phone records. He said his 4th amendment right to privacy and the necessity for warrants for searches had been breached.
Ruling: Chief Justice Roberts joined the liberal justices to rule that acquiring cellphone location data was akin to a Fourth amendment search and required a warrant. The founding fathers would have intended the right to privacy to have been updated to take account of such new inventions.
Roper V Simmons
2005
Background: Case brought that Eighth amendment right ‘not to be subject to cruel and unusual punishment’ violated by some states use of death penalty for minors.
Ruling: The SC rules in this case unconstitutional to sentence to death when crime committed before 18
Baze V Rees (Kentucky official)
2008
Background: Baze said Rees (Kentucky official) was violating his right not to eb subject to cruel and unusual punishment by using lethal injections as death penalty. If lethal injection had been banned it would have effectively ended death penalty.
Ruling: not cruel and unusual. Currently the death penalty legal in 28 states and US government resumed its use 2020.
