Browse Results

Afroyim v. Rusk 

Afroyim v. Rusk Beys Afroyim was born in Poland and immigrated to the United States in 1912; he became a naturalized citizen in 1926. In 1950 he went to Israel and voted in an Israeli election the fo . . .

Baker v. Carr 

Baker v. Carr The Constitution is clear that each state is to have two senators and that members of the House of Representatives are to be apportioned according to the state's share of the population . . .

Barenblatt v. United States 

Barenblatt v. United States Lloyd Barenblatt, a former college teacher, was called as a witness before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) looking into alleged comm . . .

Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics 

Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics Federal narcotics agents entered Bivens's apartment without a warrant, manacled him in front of his wife and children, threatened to . . .

Brandenburg v. Ohio 

Brandenburg v. Ohio The Supreme Court reached the position it had been searching for regarding “subversive speech” in the final term of the Warren Court. In a per curiam decision, it did . . .

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (Brown II) 

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (Brown II) Chief Justice Warren's strategy in Brown I, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), assumed that the states would accept the inevitability of school desegregatio . . .

Communist Party of the United States v. Subversive Activities Control Board 

Communist Party of the United States v. Subversive Activities Control Board Congress passed the Subversive Activities Control Act, commonly known as the McCarran Act, in the spring of 1950. The statu . . .

Cooper v. Aaron 

Cooper v. Aaron The implementation of a Supreme Court decision is not based on the proverbial sword or purse, but rather on the moral authority the Court commands. Naturally, assistance from Congress . . .

Engel v. Vitale 

Engel v. Vitale The New York Board of Regents had prepared for use in public schools a “nondenominational” prayer that read: “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, . . .

Escobedo v. Illinois 

Escobedo v. Illinois Danny Escobedo was taken into custody and interrogated about the fatal shooting of his brother-in-law. He repeatedly asked to see his attorney, who was in the station house, and . . .

Estes v. Texas 

Estes v. Texas On the day his trial for swindling began, Billy Sol Estes asked the judge to exclude television and radio broadcasters from the courtroom during the trial. The judge denied his motion. . . .

Flast v. Cohen 

Flast v. Cohen The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 provided massive amounts of federal aid to public, private, and parochial schools. Florence Flast and other taxpayers filed suit in N . . .

Gideon v. Wainwright 

Gideon v. Wainwright Although the Sixth Amendment right to counsel was not nationalized in Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45 (1932), that case made effective counsel an essential ingredie . . .

Gomillion v. Lightfoot 

Gomillion v. Lightfoot Black voters in Tuskegee, Alabama, charged that the state had drawn the city's boundaries so as to exclude all but a handful of African American voters without eliminating a si . . .

Griswold v. Connecticut 

Griswold v. Connecticut In the spring of 1965 the Supreme Court decided one of a handful of cases that can truly be said to have established a new area of constitutional law. In Griswo . . .

Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States 

Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States The Civil Rights Act of 1964 consisted of eleven titles—or subsections—covering education, public accommodations, expanded powers for the attorney . . .

In re Gault 

In re Gault An enduring reform of the Progressive Era was the establishment of juvenile courts where minors were tried under rules far different from those of a regular criminal court and judges had . . .

In re Winship 

In re Winship When a juvenile is legally judged to be a delinquent, the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause requires that he be provided with a hearing. In In re Gault, 387 U.S. 1 . . .

Jacobellis v. Ohio 

Jacobellis v. Ohio During the 1960s the Warren Court struggled valiantly to deal with the problem of obscenity. Because obscenity was held to be outside the protection of the First Amendment, the iss . . .

Katzenbach v. McClung 

Katzenbach v. McClung Black, Douglas, and Goldberg opinions are found in Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, 379 U.S. 241 (1964). . . .

Katzenbach v. Morgan 

Katzenbach v. Morgan Section 4(e) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 provided that no person who had successfully completed the sixth grade in Puerto Rico in which the language of instruction was other . . .

Keyishian v. Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York 

Keyishian v. Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York Harry Keyishian and others were teachers at the University of Buffalo, a private school that merged with State University of N . . .

King v. Smith 

King v. Smith Alabama, like every other state and U.S. territory, participated in the federal government's Aid to Families with Dependent Children Program (AFDC). The state's Department of Pensions a . . .

Lemon v. Kurtzman 

Lemon v. Kurtzman The Court decided three cases—Lemon v. Kurtzman from Pennsylvania and Earley v. DiCenso and Robinson v. DiCenso from Rhode Island and developed a test, known as the Lemon tes . . .

Loving v. Virginia 

Loving v. Virginia State laws regulating private conduct obviously constituted state action. Nearly all of the southern states had on their books laws prohibiting sexual relations, cohabitation, or m . . .

Mapp v. Ohio 

Mapp v. Ohio Mapp v. Ohio initially seemed to be a First Amendment case. Seven police officers attempted to gain entrance to the Cleveland home of Dollree Mapp, claiming they had informat . . .

Miranda v. Arizona 

Miranda v. Arizona Ernesto Miranda, an indigent and semiliterate twenty-three-year-old, was arrested at his home and taken to a police station. There, he was identified by the victim of a rape-kidnap . . .

Monroe v. Pape 

Monroe v. Pape The civil rights movement affected not only school desegregation, public accommodations, and voting rights; it also touched all areas of modern life in which people are discriminated a . . .

New York Times Co. v. United States 

New York Times v. United States The case collectively known as the Pentagon Papers Case —New York Times Company v. United States and United States v. The Washington Post Company —was prof . . .

New York Times v. Sullivan 

New York Times v. Sullivan As late as 1942, in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, a unanimous Court had confidently listed “fighting words,” obscenity, and libel as examples of ex . . .

Powell v. McCormack 

Powell v. McCormack Adam Clayton Powell Jr., a member of Congress from Harlem, was reelected to the House in 1966. Although he met the age, citizenship, and residency requirements for membership spel . . .

Reid v. Covert 

Reid v. Covert Clarice Covert killed her husband, a sergeant in the United States Air Force, at an air base in England. She was tried by court-martial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ . . .

Reynolds v. Sims 

Reynolds v. Sims The Court's decision in Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962), led many state legislatures to redistrict voluntarily. In other states, however, reformers had to sue in st . . .

Roth v. United States 

Roth v. United States Obscenity, like libel, was long considered outside First Amendment protection and subject to state control. The Supreme Court's first encounter with obscenity came in a little n . . .

South Carolina v. Katzenbach 

South Carolina v. Katzenbach The 1965 Voting Rights Act authorized the attorney general to send federal registrars into any county he suspected of practicing racial discrimination, in particular thos . . .

Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg County Board of Education 

Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg County Board of Education More than a decade after the decision in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), many of the schools in the South rem . . .

Terry v. Ohio 

Terry v. Ohio Officer Martin McFadden, dressed in plainclothes, was patrolling a section of downtown Cleveland one afternoon when he noticed two men who, he explained later, “didn't look right . . .

Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District 

Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District On December 16, 1965, Mary Beth Tinker, her brother John, and another student, Christopher Eckhardt, were sent home and then suspended from . . .

Trop v. Dulles 

Trop v. Dulles Albert L. Trop, while serving as a private in the U.S. Army stationed in French Morocco, caused some discipline problems within his unit and was confined to barracks. He escaped and be . . .

Walz v. Tax Commission of the City of New York 

Walz v. Tax Commission of the City of New York Frederick Walz, an owner of real estate in New York City, sued to enjoin the city's tax commission from granting a tax exemption to religious organizati . . .

Watkins v. United States 

Watkins v. United States John Watkins, a labor organizer, was summoned to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). He freely answered questions about himself and his activiti . . .

Williams v. Florida 

Williams v. Florida In this case and the companion case, Baldwin v. New York, 399 U.S. 66 (1970), the Supreme Court dealt with issues involving the fairness of criminal prosecutions. B . . .

Wisconsin v. Constantineau 

Wisconsin v. Constantineau, decided by a 6-3 vote, Jan. 19, 1971. Douglas wrote the opinion; Burger, Black and Blackmun dissented. Due process bars states from posting the names of excessive drinkers . . .