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Happened in 1803. The issue was who can ultimately decide what the law is? The importance of this is that the decision gave the Court the ability to strike down laws on the grounds that they are unconstitutional.

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The court decided that the Federal Government had the right and power to set up a Federal bank and that states did not have the power to tax the Federal Government. Marshall ruled in favor of the Federal Government and concluded, “the power to tax involves the power to destroy."

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McCulloch v. Maryland - Summary, Decision & Significance

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McCulloch v. Maryland was a landmark Supreme Court case from 1819. The court’s ruling asserted national supremacy over state authority.

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Can states pass laws that challenge the power of the Congress to regulate interstates commerce? The result was that the Court held that it is the role of the federal government to regulate commerce and that the state government cannot develop their own commerce-regulating laws.

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This case was about whether Congress had the constitutional power to prohibit slavery in free territories. The Court answered no on both accounts. Congress could not prohibit slavery in any territories. The Court also stated that African Americans cannot have no right to sue federal court. The Dred Scott case became a central issue in the debate surrounding the expansion of slavery and further fueled the flames leading to the Civil War.

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The issue was about certain speech, including sending antiwar pamphlets to drafted men, made in wartime and deemed in violation of the Espionage Act, protected by the first Amendment. No. Although the defendant would have been able to state his views during ordinary times, the Court held that in certain circumstances, like this case the nation being at war, justify such limits on the First Amendment. The Schenck decision is best known for creating the "clear and present danger" test meaning that speech could be restricted if it presented a clear and present danger.

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Buck v. Bell is not only one of the weirdest cases in the history of the Supreme Court, it is also one of the most despicable. In the early 1900’s, John and Alice Dobbs sent their foster daughter, Carrie Buck to an insane asylum on the grounds of promiscuity and feeble-mindedness. Buck had been sexually assaulted by the Dobb’s nephew, and by committing her they hoped to avoid the embarrassment which would come upon their family name. Things only got worse for Buck, because in Indiana at the time, it was common practice for the “feeble-minded” to be sterilized. Since Buck’s mom had also been institutionalized, the line of argument was that there must be some hereditary disorder that was causing these issues.

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A case in which the Court held that refusing counsel to an indigent man did not violate the Sixth Amendment.

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Do racially segregated public schools violate the Equal Protection Clause? Yes. A unanimous Court overturned Plessy v. Ferguson and held that state laws requiring or allowing racially segregated schools violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court famously stated, "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.". The Brown decision is heralded as a landmark decision in Supreme Court history, overturning Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) which had created the "separate but equal" doctrine. In Plessy, The Court held that even though a Louisiana law required rail passengers to be segregated based on race, there was no violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause so long as the accommodations at issue were "separate, but equal." By overturning this doctrine, the Brown Court helped lay the ground for the civil rights movement and integration across the country.

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Mapp v. Ohio | Oyez

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A case in which the Court decided that evidence obtained illegally may not be used against someone in a court of law by the Fourth Amendment

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Main content Decision Date: June 19, 1961 The case originated in Cleveland, Ohio, when police officers forced their way into Dollree Mapp's house without a proper search warrant. Police believed that Mapp was harboring a suspected bomber, and demanded entry. No suspect was found, but police discovered a trunk of obscene pictures in Mapp's basement.

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United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that it is unconstitutional for state officials to compose an official school prayer and encourage its recitation in public schools, due to violation of the First Amendment

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<iframe width="550" height="350" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" frameborder="0" src="https://www.uscourts.gov/audio/new-york-times-v-sullivan" title=" New York Times v. Sullivan "></iframe>

Decision Date: March 9, 1964

Background:

In 1960, the New York Times ran a full-page advertisement paid for by civil right activists. The ad openly criticized the police department in the city of Montgomery, Alabama for its treatment of civil rights protestors. Most of the descriptions in the ad were accurate, but some of the statements were false. The police commissioner, L. B. Sullivan, took offense to the ad and sued the New York Times in an Alabama court. Sullivan argued that the ad had damaged his reputation, and he had been libeled. The Alabama court ruled in favor of Sullivan, finding that the newspaper ad falsely represented the police department and Sullivan. After losing an appeal in the Supreme Court of Alabama, the New York Times took its case to the United States Supreme Court arguing that the ad was not meant to hurt Sullivan's reputation and was protected under the First Amendment.

Decision:

The United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of the newspaper. The Court said the right to publish all statements is protected under the First Amendment. The Court also said in order to prove libel, a public official must show that what was said against them was made with actual malice - "that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard for the truth."

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Main content Decision Date: March 9, 1964 In 1960, the New York Times ran a full-page advertisement paid for by civil right activists. The ad openly criticized the police department in the city of Montgomery, Alabama for its treatment of civil rights protestors.

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Rowan v. U.S. Post Office Department (1970) Katsuya 

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Rowan v. U.S. Post Office Department (1970) Katsuya 

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The Supreme Court sustained a federal law permitting addressees to prohibit all future mailings from a specified sender.

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In 1970, the Supreme Court upheld a federal law allowing the U.S. Post Office to stop unwanted mailings of sexual materials at the recipient's request. In Rowan v. U.S. Post Office Department, the court held that a person's right to privacy and to be let alone in his own home prevailed over First Amendment claims of publisher. (Photo illustration, public domain)

In Rowan v. U.S. Post Office Department, 397 U.S. 728 (1970), the Supreme Court sustained a federal law permitting addressees to prohibit all future mailings from a specified sender. Although conceding that the statute undoubtedly impeded the flow of ideas, the Court held that this was subordinate to the right of people in their homes to be free from offensive and unwanted material.

The case presented a classic clash between First Amendment rights and privacy interests.

Post Office could stop sexual material from being delivered in mail at request of recipient

The federal statute in Rowan required the U.S. Post Office to enforce the desire of any person to prevent the postal delivery of advertisements of products considered by that person to be "erotically arousing or sexually provocative."

This statute was passed in response to public outrage over unsolicited advertisements that recipients found offensive because of their lewd and salacious character. In particular, Congress was concerned about the ability of minor children to obtain such material, despite their parents' objections.

The statute allowed an individual to notify the Postmaster General and demand that specific advertisers stop mailing any future advertisements to that individual's home. As the Court recognized, the statute conferred no discretion on the government regarding content of advertisements; all the discretion was left to the individual recipient.

Publisher argued law restricting mailings violated First Amendment rights

In their legal challenge to this statute, advertisers - including Daniel Rowan who did business as American Book Service - argued that it restricted their right to communicate.

The Court, in an opinion written by Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, acknowledged this effect but stated that the right of people "to be let alone" in their own home had to be balanced against the rights of others to communicate.

Court ruled in favor of a person's right to privacy in his own home

Because people were a captive audience in their home, they had to be given some right of control over unwanted mail. Burger wrote that nothing in the Constitution gave a vendor the right to send unwanted material into an individual's home. Consequently, a mailer's right to communicate ceased at the mailbox of an unwilling addressee.

Thus, Rowan suggests that within the privacy of his or her home, a person's right to censor prevails over anyone else's right to speak. This sanctity of the home has been consistently recognized, as in Frisby v. Schultz (1988), in which the Court described the home as a hallowed sanctuary where individuals are entitled to respite from the bombardments of social life.

In his concurrence, Justice William J. Brennan Jr. agreed with the Court's holding but stated that constitutional difficulties might arise if parents tried to use the statute to stop delivery to their eighteen-year-old children still residing with them of materials the parents found offensive.

This article was originally published in 2009. Patrick Garry, JD, PhD, is a professor of law at the University of South Dakota School of Law. Professor Garry's books on the First Amendment include Scrambling For Protection: The New Media and the First Amendment, An American Paradox: Censorship in a Nation of Free Speech, and Limited Government and the Bill of Rights.

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In 1970, the Supreme Court upheld a federal law allowing the U.S. Post Office to stop unwanted mailings of sexual materials at the recipient's request. In Rowan v. U.S. Post Office Department, the court held that a person's right to privacy and to be let alone in his own home prevailed over First Amendment claims of publisher.

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In 1970, Jane Roe (a fictional name used in court documents to protect the plaintiff's identity) 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.

The Supreme Court decided that the right to privacy implied in the 14th amendment protected abortion as a fundamental right.

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Abortion Before Roe v. Wade

Until the late 19th century, abortion was legal in the United States before "quickening," the point at which a woman could first feel movements of the fetus, typically around the fourth month of pregnancy.

Some of the early regulations related to abortion were enacted in the 1820s and 1830s and dealt with the sale of dangerous drugs that women used to induce abortions. Despite these regulations and the fact that the drugs sometimes proved fatal to women, they continued to be advertised and sold.

In the late 1850s, the newly established American Medical Association began calling for the criminalization of abortion, partly in an effort to eliminate doctors' competitors such as midwives and homeopaths.

Additionally, some nativists, alarmed by the country's growing population of immigrants, were anti-abortion because they feared declining birth rates among white, American-born, Protestant women.

In 1869, the Catholic Church banned abortion at any stage of pregnancy, while in 1873, Congress passed the Comstock law, which made it illegal to distribute contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs through the U.S. mail. By the 1880s, abortion was outlawed across most of the country.

During the 1960s, during the women's rights movement, court cases involving contraceptives laid the groundwork for Roe v. Wade.

In 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a law banning the distribution of birth control to married couples, ruling that the law violated their implied right to privacy under the U.S. Constitution. And in 1972, the Supreme Court struck down a law prohibiting the distribution of contraceptives to unmarried adults.

Meanwhile, in 1970, Hawaii became the first state to legalize abortion, although the law only applied to the state's residents. That same year, New York legalized abortion, with no residency requirement. By the time of Roe v. Wade in 1973, abortion was also legally available in Alaska and Washington.

Jane Roe

In 1969, Norma McCorvey, a Texas woman in her early 20s, sought to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. McCorvey, who had grown up in difficult, impoverished circumstances, previously had given birth twice and given up both children for adoption. At the time of McCorvey's pregnancy in 1969 abortion was legal in Texas-but only for the purpose of saving a woman's life.

While American women with the financial means could obtain abortions by traveling to other countries where the procedure was safe and legal, or pay a large fee to a U.S. doctor willing to secretly perform an abortion, those options were out of reach to McCorvey and many other women.

As a result, some women resorted to illegal, dangerous, "back-alley" abortions or self-induced abortions. In the 1950s and 1960s, the estimated number of illegal abortions in the United States ranged from 200,000 to 1.2 million per year, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

After trying unsuccessfully to get an illegal abortion, McCorvey was referred to Texas attorneys Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington, who were interested in challenging anti-abortion laws.

In court documents, McCorvey became known as "Jane Roe."

Henry Wade

In 1970, the attorneys filed a lawsuit on behalf of McCorvey and all the other women "who were or might become pregnant and want to consider all options," against Henry Wade, the district attorney of Dallas County, where McCorvey lived.

Earlier, in 1964, Wade was in the national spotlight when he prosecuted Jack Ruby, who killed Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy.

Supreme Court Ruling

In June 1970, a Texas district court ruled that the state's abortion ban was illegal because it violated a constitutional right to privacy. Afterward, Wade declared he'd continue to prosecute doctors who performed abortions.

The case eventually was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Meanwhile, McCovey gave birth and put the child up for adoption.

On Jan 22, 1973, the Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision, struck down the Texas law banning abortion, effectively legalizing the procedure nationwide. In a majority opinion written by Justice Harry Blackmun, the court declared that a woman's right to an abortion was implicit in the right to privacy protected by the 14th Amendment.

The court divided pregnancy into three trimesters, and declared that the choice to end a pregnancy in the first trimester was solely up to the woman. In the second trimester, the government could regulate abortion, although not ban it, in order to protect the mother's health.

In the third trimester, the state could prohibit abortion to protect a fetus that could survive on its own outside the womb, except when a woman's health was in danger.

Legacy of Roe v. Wade

Norma McCorvey maintained a low profile following the court's decision, but in the 1980s she was active in the abortion rights movement.

However, in the mid-1990s, after becoming friends with the head of an anti-abortion group and converting to Catholicism, she turned into a vocal opponent of the procedure.

Since Roe v. Wade, many states imposed restrictions that weaken abortion rights, and Americans remain divided over support for a woman's right to choose an abortion.

In 1992, litigation against Pennsylvania's Abortion Control Act reached the Supreme Court in a case called Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey. The court upheld the central ruling in Roe v. Wade but allowed states to pass more abortion restrictions as long as they did not pose an "undue burden."

Roe v. Wade Overturned

In 2022, the nation's highest court deliberated on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which regarded the constitutionality of a Mississippi law banning most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Lower courts had ruled the law was unconstitutional under Roe v. Wade. Under Roe, states had been prohibited from banning abortions before around 23 weeks-when a fetus is considered able to survive outside a woman's womb.

In its decision, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of Mississippi's law-and overturned Roe after its nearly 50 years as precedent.

Sources

Abortion in American History. The Atlantic.
High Court Rules Abortion Legal in First 3 Months. The New York Times.
Norma McCorvey. The Washington Post.
Sarah Weddington. .
When Abortion Was a Crime, Leslie J. Reagan. University of California Press.

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Roe v. Wade: Decision, Summary & Background

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Roe v. Wade was a landmark legal decision issued on January 22, 1973, in which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Texas statute banning abortion, effectively legalizing the procedure across the United States.

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<iframe width="550" height="350" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" frameborder="0" src="http://www.uscourts.gov/audio/new-jersey-v-tlo" title=" New Jersey v. T.L.O. "></iframe>

Decision Date: January 15, 1985

Background:

In a New Jersey high school, a teacher found two girls smoking in the bathroom and took them to the principal's office. One girl admitted to smoking but the other, known as T.L.O., denied it. The principal demanded to see the girl's purse and found evidence that she was also selling marijuana at school. T.L.O. was taken to the police station where she admitted to selling marijuana. Based on her confession and the evidence in her purse, the state of New Jersey brought charges against her. In a juvenile court, T.L.O. argued that her Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures had been violated. The court sided with the school, and T.L.O. took her case to the New Jersey Supreme Court, which later found that the search was unreasonable and the evidence could not be used. The state of New Jersey appealed the decision to the United States Supreme Court.

Decision:

In 1985, the Supreme Court, by a 6-3 margin, ruled that New Jersey and the school had met a "reasonableness" standard for conducting such searches at school. The high court said school administrators don't need to have a search warrant or probable cause before conducting a search because students have a reduced expectation of privacy when in school.

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Main content Decision Date: January 15, 1985 In a New Jersey high school, a teacher found two girls smoking in the bathroom and took them to the principal's office. One girl admitted to smoking but the other, known as T.L.O., denied it.

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<iframe width="550" height="350" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" frameborder="0" src="http://www.uscourts.gov/audio/hazelwood-v-kuhlmeier" title=" Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier "></iframe>

Decision Date: January 13, 1988

Background:

Journalism students in Hazelwood East High School in St. Louis produced a school sponsored and funded newspaper called the Spectrum. One issue featured stories on teen pregnancy and divorce. The school's principal thought the stories were inappropriate and prior to the publication, he deleted the two pages containing the offensive stories without telling the journalism students. The students were upset because they had not been given the opportunity to make changes, and because several other non-offensive articles were also deleted when the pages were removed. The students felt their First Amendment rights had been violated and took their case to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. The court sided with the school, ruling that the school had the authority to remove the articles written as part of the school's curriculum. The students appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. The appeals court reversed the lower court, finding that the paper was a "public forum" and that school officials could censor its content only under extreme circumstances. Unhappy with the ruling, the school appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Decision:

In 1988, the Supreme Court, with one vacancy, handed down a 5-3 decision in favor of the school. The Court reversed the appellate court, and said that public schools do not have to allow student speech if it is inconsistent with the schools' educational mission. Even if the government can't censor such speech outside of school, public schools have the authority to limit that speech.

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Main content Decision Date: January 13, 1988 Journalism students in Hazelwood East High School in St. Louis produced a school sponsored and funded newspaper called the Spectrum. One issue featured stories on teen pregnancy and divorce. The school's principal thought the stories were inappropriate and prior to the publication, he deleted the two pages containing the offensive stories without telling the journalism students.

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Landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held, 5-4, that burning the American Flag was protected speech under the First Amendment to the Constitution, as doing counts as symbolic speech and political speech.

In this case, Activist Gregory Lee Johnson was fined $2,000 and sentenced to one year in jail in accordance with Texas law.

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In Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, a suit was brought against the state of Oregon because they withheld benefits from two men because they were fired from their jobs due to drug use. The issue with this, is that the men were fired because they used peyote, a ritual drug commonly used in Native American religious ceremonies. Since both these men were official members of the Native American Church, they thought that their activities should be protected by the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. The thing that’s so weird about this case is that both the men were actually drug rehabilitation counselors before they were fired. This seems to signal that they both viewed peyote in a different light than the substances for which they treated their patients.

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CHURCH OF THE LUKUMI BABALU AYE V. CITY OF HIALEAH --- Nadia 1992

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CHURCH OF THE LUKUMI BABALU AYE V. CITY OF HIALEAH --- Nadia 1992

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In the case of Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah, Pichardo Ernesto sued a city in Florida that had passed a law forbidding the ritual or ceremonial killing of animals. This law was passed as a way to crackdown on the practitioners of Santeria, a religion based on African and Catholic traditions which was popular in Cuba before coming to the U.S. This religion required its priests to perform certain sacrifices as tributes to certain powerful saints and demigods. In this case, the Court ruled that the statute in question discriminated against Santeria, and therefore, was a violation of Ernesto’s and others First Amendment rights.

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UNITED STATES V. APPROXIMATELY 64,695 POUNDS OF SHARK FINS nadia 2008

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UNITED STATES V. APPROXIMATELY 64,695 POUNDS OF SHARK FINS nadia 2008

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sometimes the best part of a Supreme Court case is its name. A perfect example of this is our next entry, United States v. Approximately 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins. This case emerged as a result of statutes meant to clamp down on shark hunting. While shark meat is sometimes stored and sold, during the 1900’s it was much more common for a shark to be taken for their dorsal fin, and the rest of the meat was left to simply spoil in the ocean. If you have any doubts about this being a substantial problem, just look at the name of this case. The fact that a single defendant could be responsible for this many shark fins is simply astounding.

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the Supreme Court of the United States held that it is unconstitutional to impose capital punishment for crimes committed while under the age of 18.

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landmark civil rights case in which the Supreme Court of the United States 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.

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Have you ever noticed that when you go to a restaurant they rarely sing you the traditional happy birthday song? This isn’t an attempt at uniqueness, it is actually the result of our next entry, the Happy Birthday Song Case. This series of trials began in the mid 1900’s, when the happy birthday song (the one sung at home birthday parties across the country) was officially patented. This meant that anyone who used the song owed the patentors a certain sum of money. The patent wasn’t routinely enforced until the 1980’s, when a series of restaurants were sued for using the song without permission. Because of this, you now have the litany of songs which are sung in different restaurants. These restaurants now have their own patents on these songs, thus making them perfectly legal for use.

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This case related to the definition and function of (TCPA) to send unsolicited text messages. Noah Duguid filed this lawsuit because Facebook sent him numerous automated text messages without his consent.

In a unanimous decision based on statutory interpretation of the TCPA, the Supreme Court ruled that auto dialers are defined by their function to either store or produce telephone numbers from a random or sequential number generator.

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United States V. Texas (2021) -- Laurin Griffith

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United States V. Texas (2021) -- Laurin Griffith

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United States Supreme Court case that involved the Texas Heartbeat Act, also known as Senate Bill 8 or SB8, a state law that bans abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected, typically six weeks into pregnancy

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Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022) Katsuya

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Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022) Katsuya

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Petitioner Joseph Kennedy lost his job as a high school football coach in the Bremerton School District after he knelt at midfield after games to offer a quiet personal prayer. Mr. Kennedy sued in federal court, al- leging that the District's actions violated the First Amendment's Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses.

The Supreme Court ruled today in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, siding with a public-school football coach who demanded the right to pray with his players after games at the 50-yard-line. The decision significantly erodes the separation of church and state in public schools.

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Supreme Court rules on Kennedy v. Bremmerton School District case

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American Hospital Association v. Becerra. Charlie 2022

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American Hospital Association v. Becerra. Charlie 2022

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American Hospital Association v. Becerra. The Court unanimously held that the Department of Health and Human Services lacks the discretion to vary prescription drug reimbursement rates among hospital groups without first making a survey of hospitals' acquisition costs.

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Vega v. Tekoh | Oyez

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Egbert v. Boule | Oyez