Landmark Supreme Court Cases

In the final hours of his presidency, John Adams signed a stack of last-minute judicial appointments. His outgoing Secretary of State, John Marshall, who was simultaneously the incoming Chief Justice, didn't finish delivering all the commissions before Thomas Jefferson took office. Jefferson's Secretary of State, James Madison, refused to deliver the remaining ones. One of those appointees, William Marbury, sued Madison directly in the Supreme Court.

The dispute grew out of the Judiciary Act of 1801, passed by the outgoing Federalist Congress, which created dozens of new judgeships that Adams filled with so-called midnight judges. Marbury's post was justice of the peace for the District of Columbia, a five-year appointment. He filed suit directly in the Supreme Court in December 1801, seeking a writ of mandamus under Section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789.

The new Republican Congress, hostile to the Federalist-dominated courts, repealed the 1801 Act and canceled the Supreme Court's entire 1802 Term, so the case was not argued until February 1803. Marshall, who as Secretary of State had failed to deliver Marbury's commission in the first place, did not recuse himself.

Did Marbury have a legal right to his commission, and could the Supreme Court order Madison to deliver it?

Chief Justice Marshall ruled that yes, Marbury deserved his commission, but no, the Supreme Court couldn't order its delivery, because the law that gave SCOTUS that power was unconstitutional. The Court ruled against its own authority in order to claim a far greater one.

Marshall structured the opinion around three questions: whether Marbury had a right to the commission (yes, once it was signed and sealed), whether the law gave him a remedy (yes, mandamus), and whether the Supreme Court could issue that remedy (no). He held that Section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 unconstitutionally expanded the Court's original jurisdiction beyond what Article III allows.

The decision was unanimous among the four justices who took part; Justices William Cushing and Alfred Moore were absent. It was the first time the Supreme Court struck down an act of Congress, and it would not do so again until Dred Scott in 1857.

By ruling that a law was unconstitutional, Marshall established the doctrine of judicial review, the Supreme Court's power to strike down any law that conflicts with the Constitution. This power is nowhere explicitly stated in the Constitution, but it has been unchallenged ever since.

In the short term the ruling changed little: Marbury never received his commission, and the Jefferson administration treated the outcome as a victory because the Court had declined to order the executive branch to act.

The Court's power to review state laws was separately confirmed in Fletcher v. Peck (1810) and Martin v. Hunter's Lessee (1816), completing the framework of judicial review over both federal and state action.

The single most important structural decision in American legal history. Every time the Supreme Court strikes down a law, from abortion rights to campaign finance to gun regulations, it's exercising a power this case invented.

Marshall served as Chief Justice for 34 years, the longest tenure of any Chief Justice (William O. Douglas's 36 years is the longest of any justice), and used the office to establish the judiciary as a coequal branch. The Supreme Court has since held more than 180 federal statutes and well over 1,000 state and local laws unconstitutional in whole or in part.

Congress created the Second Bank of the United States, which many states deeply resented. Maryland decided to tax the Baltimore branch of that bank into oblivion. James McCulloch, the bank's cashier, refused to pay the tax. Maryland argued Congress had no constitutional authority to create a national bank in the first place, since the Constitution doesn't mention banks.

Congress had chartered the Second Bank in 1816 for a 20-year term, after letting the First Bank's charter lapse in 1811. By 1818 at least eight states had passed laws taxing or hampering the Bank's branches; Maryland imposed an annual $15,000 levy on any bank not chartered by the state. James William McCulloch, who ran the Baltimore branch, deliberately refused to pay so the question could be tested in court.

The case was argued over nine days in February 1819 by an extraordinary bar: Daniel Webster and William Pinkney for the Bank, and Luther Martin, a delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, for Maryland.

Does Congress have the power to create a national bank? And can a state tax a federal institution?

The Court ruled that Congress does have implied powers beyond those listed in the Constitution, if an action is 'necessary and proper' to carrying out its listed powers, Congress can do it. And no, states cannot tax a federal institution because 'the power to tax involves the power to destroy.'

Marshall's unanimous opinion read the Necessary and Proper Clause broadly: 'Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end ... are constitutional.' Incorporating a bank was a permissible means of exercising Congress's powers to tax, borrow, and regulate commerce.

On the tax question, Marshall held that letting states tax federal instruments would let them defeat federal law, which the Supremacy Clause forbids. The Court did not decide whether a state could apply a general, non-discriminatory tax to a federal entity, an issue left for later cases.

Established the doctrine of implied federal powers, dramatically expanding what Congress can do. Also cemented federal supremacy over the states when the two conflict.

The ruling did not save the Bank politically. President Andrew Jackson vetoed the recharter bill in 1832, calling the Bank unconstitutional despite McCulloch, and the Bank's federal charter expired in 1836.

Nearly every major expansion of federal power, Social Security, Medicare, the interstate highway system, the Civil Rights Act, rests on the implied powers framework this case created.

The 'necessary and proper' reasoning was later used to uphold the Social Security Act in Helvering v. Davis (1937), the public-accommodations provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, and parts of the Affordable Care Act in NFIB v. Sebelius (2012).

During the Watergate scandal investigation, special prosecutor Leon Jaworski subpoenaed President Nixon's secret White House tape recordings. Nixon refused, claiming absolute executive privilege, the president's right to keep communications confidential. He argued a sitting president could not be compelled by a court to produce evidence.

The Watergate grand jury had named Nixon an unindicted co-conspirator in March 1974. Jaworski subpoenaed tapes and documents tied to 64 conversations for the trial of seven former Nixon aides. Nixon released edited transcripts and moved to quash the subpoena, asserting an unreviewable privilege.

The case was argued on July 8, 1974, and decided just 16 days later, on July 24. Justice William Rehnquist, a former Nixon Justice Department official, recused himself, leaving an 8-0 vote.

Does the President have an absolute constitutional privilege to withhold evidence from criminal proceedings?

The Court unanimously held that while presidents do have a limited executive privilege, it is not absolute. It cannot be used to obstruct criminal justice. Nixon had to hand over the tapes.

Chief Justice Warren Burger, himself a Nixon appointee, wrote that it is for the courts, not the President, to say what the law is, reaffirming Marbury. A generalized interest in confidentiality could not outweigh a specific, demonstrated need for evidence in a pending criminal trial.

The Court recognized for the first time that executive privilege has a constitutional footing, strongest for military, diplomatic, or national-security secrets, but held it is presumptive rather than absolute and subject to private review by a judge.

Nixon resigned 16 days after the ruling. The tapes proved his direct involvement in the Watergate cover-up.

The recordings included the June 23, 1972 'smoking gun' conversation showing Nixon had ordered the FBI's Watergate investigation obstructed six days after the break-in. He resigned on August 9, 1974, the only U.S. president ever to do so.

Established that executive privilege exists but has limits, and that no president, no matter how powerful, is above a court order. Cited regularly in every subsequent presidential legal battle.

It was central to litigation over the Clinton grand jury subpoena in the 1990s and to Trump v. Vance (2020) and Trump v. Thompson (2022), where courts relied on it to reject sweeping claims of presidential immunity from legal process.

Dred Scott was an enslaved man who had lived for years in free states and territories with his enslaver. He sued for his freedom, arguing that living on free soil had made him free. His case worked its way up to the Supreme Court over 11 years.

Army surgeon John Emerson had taken Scott to Illinois, a free state, and to Fort Snelling in the Wisconsin Territory, where the Missouri Compromise of 1820 barred slavery, for long stretches in the 1830s. Scott first sued in Missouri state court in 1846; a jury ruled for him in 1850, but the Missouri Supreme Court reversed in 1852. A fresh federal suit followed against Emerson's brother-in-law, John Sanford, whose name was misspelled 'Sandford' in the official case caption.

Was Dred Scott free because he lived in a free state? And did he have the legal standing to sue?

Chief Justice Roger Taney delivered a sweeping, catastrophic ruling: Black Americans, whether enslaved or free, were not citizens and had no right to sue in court. The Missouri Compromise (which had restricted slavery in new territories) was struck down as unconstitutional. Scott remained enslaved.

Taney wrote for a 7-2 majority; every justice filed a separate opinion, and the decision ran more than 240 pages. He asserted that the Framers regarded Black people as 'beings of an inferior order' with 'no rights which the white man was bound to respect.'

Going further, Taney held that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in the territories, making the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, only the second time an act of Congress had been struck down. Justices John McLean and Benjamin Curtis dissented, and Curtis resigned from the Court months later, in part over the case.

The decision inflamed tensions between North and South, accelerated the path to the Civil War, and deepened the national crisis over slavery. It is widely considered the Supreme Court's worst-ever decision.

It energized the new Republican Party, was denounced by Abraham Lincoln in his 1858 debates with Stephen Douglas, and is seen by most historians as hastening the sectional break that led to war in 1861.

Scott himself was returned to the Blow family, who had originally owned him, and was freed in May 1857. He died of tuberculosis in September 1858.

Was overturned, completely and explicitly, by the 14th Amendment (1868), which guaranteed citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States.

The 13th Amendment (1865) had already abolished slavery. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes later described the ruling as one of the Court's 'self-inflicted wounds.'

Homer Plessy, a man who was one-eighth Black, deliberately sat in a whites-only railroad car in Louisiana to challenge the state's Separate Car Act. He was arrested as planned. His lawyers argued that forced separation violated the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection.

The test case was organized by the Comite des Citoyens, a group of Black and Creole activists in New Orleans. They chose Plessy because he could pass as white, and arranged for the East Louisiana Railroad, which resented the cost of running separate cars, to cooperate. Louisiana's Separate Car Act had been enacted in 1890.

Does a state law requiring separate train cars for Black and white passengers violate the Constitution?

The Court ruled 7–1 that separate facilities were constitutional as long as they were 'equal.' Justice John Marshall Harlan was the lone dissenter, writing that 'our Constitution is color-blind.'

Justice Henry Billings Brown's majority opinion held that the 14th Amendment secured legal and political equality but not 'social' equality, and that any stigma from separation existed 'solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it.'

Harlan, a former Kentucky slaveholder, warned that the ruling would 'in time, prove to be quite as pernicious as the decision made by this tribunal in the Dred Scott case.' Justice David Brewer did not participate.

Gave legal cover to Jim Crow laws across the South for six decades, segregated schools, restaurants, hospitals, water fountains, buses, and more.

The 'equal' half of the doctrine was almost never honored: Southern states routinely spent several times as much per white pupil as per Black pupil, and separation was extended to nearly every public and private space.

Directly overturned by Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Now held up as a cautionary example of how the Court can be catastrophically wrong.

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund spent nearly two decades narrowing the doctrine in cases such as Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1938) and Sweatt v. Painter (1950) before Brown held that separate schools are 'inherently unequal.'

Linda Brown, a Black third-grader in Topeka, Kansas, was denied admission to her neighborhood school because of her race. Her father, Oliver Brown, joined a class-action lawsuit organized by the NAACP. The case was argued twice before the Supreme Court by NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall, who would later become the first Black Supreme Court Justice.

Brown consolidated five cases from Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, and the District of Columbia. The NAACP's strategy, designed by Charles Hamilton Houston and executed by Marshall, leaned on social-science evidence, including the Clark 'doll studies' referenced in the opinion's Footnote 11, about the psychological harm of segregation.

The case was first argued in December 1952, then set for reargument in December 1953 after Chief Justice Fred Vinson died and was succeeded by Earl Warren, the former governor of California.

Does racial segregation in public schools violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment?

The unanimous Court, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, ruled that separate schools are inherently unequal. 'Separate but equal' was dead. Warren worked behind the scenes for months to make the decision unanimous, knowing a divided Court would embolden resistance.

Warren kept the opinion short, plain, and unemotional, about 11 pages, so newspapers could reprint it in full. Its core holding was that 'in the field of public education the doctrine of separate but equal has no place.'

A companion case, Bolling v. Sharpe, struck down segregation in D.C. schools under the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause, since the 14th Amendment binds only the states. In 1955, 'Brown II' ordered desegregation 'with all deliberate speed,' a phrase that allowed years of delay.

The ruling launched the modern Civil Rights Movement. It did not end segregation overnight, massive resistance from states and school districts stretched integration fights for decades, but it removed the legal foundation that had justified apartheid-style separation.

Virginia briefly closed some public schools rather than integrate, 101 members of Congress signed the 1956 'Southern Manifesto' attacking the decision, and in 1957 President Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne to enforce integration at Little Rock Central High School.

One of the most celebrated decisions in American history. Thurgood Marshall's courtroom victory here is commemorated on the building bearing his name in Washington, D.C.

A decade after Brown, only about 2 percent of Black students in the former Confederate states attended integrated schools. Real change followed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which let Washington cut off funds to segregated districts, and rulings such as Green v. County School Board (1968) and Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg (1971).

Richard Loving (white) and Mildred Jeter (Black and Native American) were married in Washington, D.C., then returned home to Virginia, where interracial marriage was a crime. Police raided their bedroom in the middle of the night and arrested them. They were convicted and sentenced to a year in prison, suspended on the condition they leave Virginia and not return together for 25 years.

They were charged under Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924. In 1959 the trial judge, Leon Bazile, suspended the sentence but wrote that 'Almighty God created the races ... and he placed them on separate continents.' The couple moved to Washington and, with ACLU lawyers Bernard Cohen and Philip Hirschkop, began challenging the conviction in 1963.

Does Virginia's anti-miscegenation law violate the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection and Due Process clauses?

Unanimous. The Court held that laws restricting marriage based on race violated both the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses. 'The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.'

Chief Justice Warren's opinion found that the statute rested on 'invidious racial discrimination' with no purpose 'independent of' that discrimination, and that the right to marry is a 'fundamental freedom' that a state cannot condition on race.

Struck down anti-miscegenation laws in 16 states overnight.

All 16 remaining bans, every one of them in the South, became unenforceable immediately. Alabama did not formally strike its dead-letter ban from the state constitution until a 2000 referendum, which passed with about 60 percent of the vote.

The legal and moral logic of Loving became the direct foundation for Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), which extended the right to marry to same-sex couples.

Loving was also cited as controlling in Zablocki v. Redhail (1978) and Turner v. Safley (1987). June 12, the date of the decision, is now widely marked as 'Loving Day.'

During World War I, Charles Schenck distributed leaflets urging men to resist the military draft. He was charged under the Espionage Act of 1917, which made it illegal to interfere with military recruitment.

Schenck was general secretary of the Socialist Party of America. The party mailed roughly 15,000 leaflets to men called for the draft, comparing conscription to the involuntary servitude barred by the 13th Amendment and urging recipients to 'assert your rights.'

Does the First Amendment protect speech urging resistance to the draft during wartime?

The unanimous Court upheld his conviction. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote that the question is whether the words 'create a clear and present danger' of bringing about evils that Congress has power to prevent. In wartime, urging draft resistance was like 'falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.'

Holmes added that 'the character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done,' so speech protected in peacetime could be punished when circumstances made it dangerous.

Months later, in Abrams v. United States (1919), Holmes broke with the Court and dissented as it upheld further Espionage Act convictions, setting out a more speech-protective view and the 'marketplace of ideas' metaphor.

Established that First Amendment protections are not absolute, speech that creates a 'clear and present danger' can be restricted.

More than 2,000 people were prosecuted under the Espionage and Sedition Acts during and after World War I, including Socialist leader Eugene V. Debs, whose ten-year sentence the Court upheld the same year in Debs v. United States.

The 'clear and present danger' test has been modified significantly by later cases (especially Brandenburg v. Ohio, 1969). The 'shouting fire' line is the most quoted metaphor in First Amendment law, though it's often misquoted and misapplied.

Brandenburg replaced the test outright, protecting even advocacy of illegal action unless it is 'directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action' and likely to do so. The 'fire in a theater' phrase was rhetoric, not a legal rule, and courts do not apply it as one.

The Nixon administration tried to prevent the New York Times and Washington Post from publishing the Pentagon Papers, a secret Defense Department history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam that revealed the government had been systematically lying to the public about the war. The government argued publication would cause 'grave and irreparable' national security harm.

Daniel Ellsberg, a former Defense Department analyst, had leaked the roughly 7,000-page study. The Times began publishing excerpts on June 13, 1971; the administration then won a temporary restraining order, the first federal injunction against a newspaper in U.S. history, after three installments, and the Post launched its own series.

The litigation moved at extraordinary speed. The case was argued on June 26 and decided on June 30, 1971.

Can the government use 'prior restraint', stopping publication before it happens, to prevent newspapers from publishing classified documents?

The Court ruled 6–3 against the government. The press has a strong presumption against prior restraint. The government failed to meet the very heavy burden required to justify stopping publication before it happens.

The decision itself was a brief, unsigned per curiam opinion. Each of the nine justices then wrote separately, producing nine opinions ranging from near-absolute protection (Black and Douglas) to a willingness to permit restraint on stronger facts (Harlan, Burger, and Blackmun in dissent).

The papers were published. They severely damaged public trust in the government's handling of the Vietnam War.

The Justice Department's separate criminal case against Ellsberg collapsed in 1973 when the judge dismissed all charges after learning of government wiretapping and a White House 'Plumbers' break-in at Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office.

The gold standard case for press freedom and the strongest statement against prior restraint. Journalists and news organizations cite it constantly in fights over publication of sensitive government information.

No U.S. court has since imposed a prior restraint on the press that survived appeal. The decision is routinely invoked in disputes over WikiLeaks, the 2013 Snowden disclosures, and other national-security reporting.

Gregory Lee Johnson burned an American flag outside the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas as a political protest. He was convicted under a Texas law banning flag desecration. He argued it was symbolic political speech protected by the First Amendment.

Johnson burned the flag outside Dallas City Hall while other demonstrators chanted; no one was injured. He was the only one of roughly 100 protesters charged, was convicted of 'desecration of a venerated object,' and was sentenced to a year in jail and a $2,000 fine.

Is burning the American flag a protected form of symbolic speech under the First Amendment?

The Court ruled 5–4 that flag burning is symbolic political speech, exactly the kind of expression the First Amendment was designed to protect. Justice Brennan wrote that the government cannot prohibit expression of an idea simply because society finds it disagreeable.

The unusual majority paired liberal Justices Brennan and Marshall with conservatives Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy. Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice John Paul Stevens dissented, Stevens arguing the flag is a unique national symbol Congress may protect.

Struck down flag desecration laws in 48 states overnight. Congress passed the Flag Protection Act of 1989 in response, the Court struck that down too.

The Court invalidated the federal Flag Protection Act 5-4 the next year in United States v. Eichman (1990). Proposed constitutional amendments to allow flag-desecration bans have repeatedly fallen short in Congress, most narrowly by a single Senate vote in 2006.

One of the most controversial free speech decisions ever. Shows that the First Amendment protects speech we hate, not just speech we like. The alternative, letting the government punish offensive speech, is a far greater danger.

It is now a standard teaching example of protection for symbolic and unpopular expression, cited alongside Tinker v. Des Moines (1969) in later cases about conduct as speech.

Ernesto Miranda was arrested in Phoenix, Arizona for kidnapping and rape. After two hours of police interrogation, with no lawyer present and no one telling him he could refuse to talk, he signed a confession. He had no idea he didn't have to speak.

The Supreme Court consolidated four separate cases under the Miranda name. Miranda's signed statement included a printed paragraph asserting the confession was voluntary and made 'with full knowledge of my legal rights,' even though police had explained none of them.

Are confessions obtained without informing suspects of their rights admissible in court?

Chief Justice Warren held that the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and the Sixth Amendment right to counsel require police to inform suspects of their rights before custodial interrogation. If they don't, any confession is inadmissible.

Warren, a former district attorney, wrote for a 5-4 majority that custodial questioning is inherently coercive, so a suspect can waive these rights only 'knowingly and intelligently.' Justices Harlan, Stewart, White, and Clark dissented, warning the rules would handicap legitimate policing.

Congress tried to override Miranda in federal cases with a 1968 statute, but the Court held 7-2 in Dickerson v. United States (2000) that Miranda is a constitutional rule Congress cannot repeal by ordinary law.

Created the 'Miranda warning', those familiar words every TV cop reads from a card. Police departments across the country had to change their interrogation practices overnight.

Miranda's own conviction was thrown out, but he was retried without the confession, convicted on other evidence, and imprisoned. He was stabbed to death in a 1976 bar fight; the suspect was read his Miranda rights and chose to stay silent.

Miranda warnings are now global shorthand for the concept of legal rights upon arrest. The decision remains controversial among law enforcement but is deeply embedded in American legal culture.

Later rulings trimmed it: Harris v. New York (1971) let unwarned statements be used to impeach a testifying defendant, New York v. Quarles (1984) created a 'public safety' exception, and Berghuis v. Thompkins (2010) held a suspect must expressly invoke the right to silence.

Clarence Earl Gideon was a drifter charged with breaking into a Florida pool hall. He appeared in court without a lawyer, asked the judge to appoint one because he couldn't afford one, and was told Florida only provided lawyers in capital cases. He represented himself, was convicted, and spent time in prison handwriting a petition to the Supreme Court in pencil.

The charge, breaking into the Bay Harbor Pool Room in Panama City, was a felony carrying up to five years. From the Florida State Prison, Gideon mailed a five-page handwritten petition to the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case and appointed future Justice Abe Fortas, then a leading Washington lawyer, to argue for him.

Does the Sixth Amendment right to counsel require states to provide lawyers to defendants who can't afford one?

Unanimous. The Court overturned Betts v. Brady (1942) and held that the right to counsel is fundamental. Any person facing a serious criminal charge who cannot afford an attorney must be provided one by the government.

Justice Hugo Black, who had dissented in Betts 21 years earlier, wrote the opinion. 'Lawyers in criminal courts are necessities, not luxuries,' he said, and the Sixth Amendment right binds the states through the 14th Amendment.

Created the public defender system as we know it today. Thousands of prisoners were immediately eligible for new trials.

Florida had to retry or release large numbers of inmates. Gideon was retried in 1963 with an appointed lawyer and acquitted in about an hour, though chronic underfunding of indigent defense has been documented ever since.

Gideon's hand-penciled petition, now housed at the Library of Congress, is one of the most celebrated documents in American legal history. Anthony Lewis's book 'Gideon's Trumpet' made his story famous.

The right was extended to any charge that results in jail time in Argersinger v. Hamlin (1972) and to a defendant's first appeal in Douglas v. California, decided the same day as Gideon.

Cleveland police burst into Dollree Mapp's home looking for a bombing suspect. They had no warrant. They didn't find the suspect, but they found obscene materials and arrested Mapp for possessing them. She was convicted. Her lawyers initially appealed on First Amendment grounds, the exclusionary rule question almost emerged by accident.

The officers were seeking a suspect tied to a case connected to numbers racketeer Don King. When Mapp demanded a warrant, an officer waved a piece of paper; no valid warrant was ever produced at trial. Police found the allegedly obscene books and photos in a trunk in the basement.

Does the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches require that illegally obtained evidence be excluded from state criminal trials?

Yes. The Court extended the 'exclusionary rule', previously applied only to federal courts, to all state courts. Evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment cannot be used to convict someone, regardless of how guilty they might be.

Justice Tom Clark's 6-3 opinion carried the federal rule of Weeks v. United States (1914) into the states and overruled Wolf v. Colorado (1949). Without exclusion, Clark wrote, the Fourth Amendment would be reduced to 'a form of words.'

Fundamentally changed police investigative practices nationwide. Prosecutors who relied on warrantless searches suddenly found their evidence thrown out.

Departments across the country rewrote search-and-warrant training, and studies in the following years measured increases in warrant applications and in motions to suppress evidence.

The exclusionary rule remains one of the most debated in criminal law. Critics argue it lets guilty people go free on 'technicalities.' Supporters argue the alternative, letting police ignore the Constitution whenever convenient, is worse.

The Court later carved out major exceptions: 'good faith' reliance on a defective warrant (United States v. Leon, 1984), inevitable discovery (Nix v. Williams, 1984), and attenuation (Utah v. Strieff, 2016).

Connecticut had a law making it illegal for anyone, including married couples, to use contraceptives. Estelle Griswold, the executive director of Planned Parenthood in Connecticut, deliberately opened a birth control clinic to challenge the law. She was arrested and fined $100.

The 1879 statute banned the 'use' of any contraceptive drug or device and criminalized assisting others. Griswold and Dr. C. Lee Buxton of Yale opened a New Haven clinic on November 1, 1961, and were arrested days later. An earlier challenge, Poe v. Ullman (1961), had been dismissed as not yet ripe.

Does the Constitution protect a married couple's right to use contraception without government interference?

Yes. Justice Douglas found that the Constitution contains 'penumbras' and 'emanations' from specific amendments that together create a zone of privacy. The idea of police searching married couples' bedrooms for signs of contraceptive use was, the Court said, 'repulsive to the notions of privacy surrounding the marriage relationship.'

Douglas pointed to the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Amendments as the source of these 'zones of privacy.' Concurrences by Justice Goldberg (stressing the Ninth Amendment) and Justices Harlan and White (grounding the right in 14th Amendment due process) offered other rationales. Justices Black and Stewart dissented; Stewart called the law 'uncommonly silly' but not unconstitutional.

Struck down Connecticut's contraception ban. More significantly, established the constitutional right to privacy, a right not explicitly mentioned anywhere in the document.

It also doomed a similar Massachusetts law, which the Court struck down as applied to unmarried people in Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972).

The implied right to privacy became the legal foundation for Roe v. Wade (1973), Lawrence v. Texas (2003, striking down anti-sodomy laws), and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015). The Dobbs decision (2022) raised questions about its long-term stability.

The Dobbs majority stated that its reasoning did not undermine Griswold, while a concurrence urged the Court to reconsider that entire line of cases.

Norma McCorvey (using the pseudonym 'Jane Roe') was a pregnant Texas woman who wanted an abortion but couldn't get one legally in her state. Texas, like most states at the time, banned abortion except to save the mother's life. Her lawyers argued the law violated her constitutional right to privacy.

McCorvey filed suit in 1970 against Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade and was represented by recent law graduates Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee. She gave birth and placed the child for adoption before the case was decided, and years later became an anti-abortion activist.

The case was argued twice, in December 1971 and again in October 1972 after Justices Powell and Rehnquist joined the Court.

Does the Constitution protect a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy?

The Court ruled 7–2 that the right to privacy established in Griswold extends to a woman's decision to have an abortion. It created a trimester framework: states couldn't restrict abortion in the first trimester, could regulate it in the second, and could ban it in the third (except for the mother's health).

Justice Harry Blackmun's opinion tied state regulatory power to the trimester structure and to fetal 'viability.' Justices Byron White and William Rehnquist dissented, White calling the decision 'an exercise of raw judicial power.'

Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) discarded the trimester framework but reaffirmed what it called Roe's 'central holding' under a new 'undue burden' standard.

Established a nationwide constitutional right to abortion, striking down laws in 46 states.

It also created a durable national political movement and made Supreme Court nominations a central battleground in American politics for the next half century.

One of the most politically divisive decisions in American history. After nearly 50 years, it was overturned by Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022), which held there is no constitutional right to abortion and returned the issue to the states.

Dobbs was decided 6-3 on the judgment and 5-4 on overruling Roe outright. Within a year, roughly a dozen states had banned or sharply restricted abortion while others moved to expand access.

The 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore came down to Florida, and its 25 electoral votes. The margin was razor-thin (eventually certified at 537 votes out of nearly 6 million cast). Manual recounts were underway in several counties when the case reached the Supreme Court.

After the November 7 vote, an automatic machine recount left Bush narrowly ahead. On December 8 the Florida Supreme Court ordered a statewide manual recount of 'undervote' ballots. The U.S. Supreme Court stayed that recount on December 9 and heard argument on December 11.

Did the Florida Supreme Court's order for a manual recount violate the Equal Protection Clause because different counties used different standards to evaluate ballots?

The Court ruled 5–4 that yes, the inconsistent standards for counting ballots violated equal protection. But it also ruled, controversially, that there wasn't enough time to implement a constitutional recount before the federal deadline. The recount stopped. Bush won Florida. Bush won the presidency.

Seven justices agreed there was an equal-protection problem; the Court split 5-4 on the remedy. Because Florida law aimed at the December 12 federal 'safe harbor' date, and that was the day of the decision, the majority ended the recount instead of returning the case for uniform standards.

Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer dissented. Stevens wrote that 'the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.'

George W. Bush became the 43rd President of the United States. Gore conceded the next day.

A later ballot review by a consortium of news organizations concluded the result would probably have held under the limited recount then underway, though some broader counting scenarios favored Gore. Gore won the national popular vote by about 540,000.

The majority opinion explicitly stated it should not be used as precedent in future cases, an almost unprecedented disclaimer. It remains one of the most criticized decisions in modern history, with many legal scholars arguing the Court had no constitutional business stopping a state's election recount.

The dispute spurred the Help America Vote Act of 2002, which funded the replacement of punch-card machines and created the federal Election Assistance Commission.

Citizens United, a conservative nonprofit, made a critical film about Hillary Clinton and wanted to air it close to the 2008 Democratic primary. Federal campaign finance law prohibited corporations from spending money on 'electioneering communications' within 30 days of a primary. Citizens United argued this violated their First Amendment rights.

The group wanted to distribute 'Hillary: The Movie' through video-on-demand. Lower courts held this violated the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, known as McCain-Feingold. The Supreme Court then ordered reargument on the broader question of whether to overrule Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce (1990) and part of McConnell v. FEC (2003).

Can the government limit how much corporations and unions spend on political advocacy?

The Court ruled 5–4 that political spending is a form of protected speech. The government cannot restrict independent political expenditures by corporations, associations, or labor unions.

Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion held that 'political speech does not lose First Amendment protection simply because its source is a corporation.' The Court upheld the law's disclosure requirements 8-1. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote a 90-page dissent.

Opened the floodgates to unlimited 'independent' political spending. Super PACs were born. Campaign spending exploded, outside spending in federal elections jumped from roughly $340 million in 2008 to more than $3 billion in the 2020 cycle, according to OpenSecrets.

Two months after the ruling, the D.C. Circuit's SpeechNow.org v. FEC decision applied its logic to permit 'super PACs' that raise unlimited sums for independent expenditures.

One of the most controversial modern decisions. Critics argue it allowed billionaires and corporations to drown out ordinary citizens in politics. Supporters argue restricting political spending is censorship. It fundamentally changed how American elections are financed.

National polls have consistently found broad, bipartisan public disapproval. Constitutional amendments to overturn it have been introduced in Congress repeatedly without passing, and several states and cities have adopted resolutions calling for one.

Jim Obergefell married his terminally ill partner John Arthur in Maryland (one of the states where it was legal), then returned to Ohio, which didn't recognize the marriage. When Arthur died, Ohio refused to list Obergefell as his surviving spouse on the death certificate. Obergefell sued. The case was consolidated with challenges from several other states.

The Court combined cases from Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee after the Sixth Circuit became the only federal appeals court to uphold state same-sex marriage bans, creating the circuit split that made Supreme Court review likely. It followed United States v. Windsor (2013), which had struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act's refusal to recognize such marriages.

Does the Constitution require states to license and recognize same-sex marriages?

Yes, 5–4. Justice Kennedy wrote that the right to marry is fundamental under the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the 14th Amendment. That right extends equally to same-sex couples. 'No union is more profound than marriage.'

Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito each filed separate dissents, focused largely on whether the question should have been decided by voters and legislatures rather than the Court.

Legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states, striking down marriage bans in the 13 states that still had them.

In 2022, amid concerns raised in Dobbs, Congress passed the Respect for Marriage Act, requiring federal and interstate recognition of existing marriages, though it does not itself force states to issue licenses.

Built directly on the logic of Loving v. Virginia. The Dobbs decision (2022) raised questions about its future stability, as Justice Thomas explicitly called for reconsidering it.

By the mid-2020s, national polling put public support for same-sex marriage around 70 percent, up from about 42 percent when Massachusetts became the first state to legalize it in 2004 and 27 percent in 1996 (Gallup).

In the final hours of his presidency, John Adams signed a stack of last-minute judicial appointments. His outgoing Secretary of State, John Marshall, who was simultaneously the incoming Chief Justice, didn't finish delivering all the commissions before Thomas Jefferson took office. Jefferson's Secretary of State, James Madison, refused to deliver the remaining ones. One of those appointees, William Marbury, sued Madison directly in the Supreme Court.

The dispute grew out of the Judiciary Act of 1801, passed by the outgoing Federalist Congress, which created dozens of new judgeships that Adams filled with so-called midnight judges. Marbury's post was justice of the peace for the District of Columbia, a five-year appointment. He filed suit directly in the Supreme Court in December 1801, seeking a writ of mandamus under Section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789.

The new Republican Congress, hostile to the Federalist-dominated courts, repealed the 1801 Act and canceled the Supreme Court's entire 1802 Term, so the case was not argued until February 1803. Marshall, who as Secretary of State had failed to deliver Marbury's commission in the first place, did not recuse himself.

Did Marbury have a legal right to his commission, and could the Supreme Court order Madison to deliver it?

Chief Justice Marshall ruled that yes, Marbury deserved his commission, but no, the Supreme Court couldn't order its delivery, because the law that gave SCOTUS that power was unconstitutional. The Court ruled against its own authority in order to claim a far greater one.

Marshall structured the opinion around three questions: whether Marbury had a right to the commission (yes, once it was signed and sealed), whether the law gave him a remedy (yes, mandamus), and whether the Supreme Court could issue that remedy (no). He held that Section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 unconstitutionally expanded the Court's original jurisdiction beyond what Article III allows.

The decision was unanimous among the four justices who took part; Justices William Cushing and Alfred Moore were absent. It was the first time the Supreme Court struck down an act of Congress, and it would not do so again until Dred Scott in 1857.

By ruling that a law was unconstitutional, Marshall established the doctrine of judicial review, the Supreme Court's power to strike down any law that conflicts with the Constitution. This power is nowhere explicitly stated in the Constitution, but it has been unchallenged ever since.

In the short term the ruling changed little: Marbury never received his commission, and the Jefferson administration treated the outcome as a victory because the Court had declined to order the executive branch to act.

The Court's power to review state laws was separately confirmed in Fletcher v. Peck (1810) and Martin v. Hunter's Lessee (1816), completing the framework of judicial review over both federal and state action.

The single most important structural decision in American legal history. Every time the Supreme Court strikes down a law, from abortion rights to campaign finance to gun regulations, it's exercising a power this case invented.

Marshall served as Chief Justice for 34 years, the longest tenure of any Chief Justice (William O. Douglas's 36 years is the longest of any justice), and used the office to establish the judiciary as a coequal branch. The Supreme Court has since held more than 180 federal statutes and well over 1,000 state and local laws unconstitutional in whole or in part.

Congress created the Second Bank of the United States, which many states deeply resented. Maryland decided to tax the Baltimore branch of that bank into oblivion. James McCulloch, the bank's cashier, refused to pay the tax. Maryland argued Congress had no constitutional authority to create a national bank in the first place, since the Constitution doesn't mention banks.

Congress had chartered the Second Bank in 1816 for a 20-year term, after letting the First Bank's charter lapse in 1811. By 1818 at least eight states had passed laws taxing or hampering the Bank's branches; Maryland imposed an annual $15,000 levy on any bank not chartered by the state. James William McCulloch, who ran the Baltimore branch, deliberately refused to pay so the question could be tested in court.

The case was argued over nine days in February 1819 by an extraordinary bar: Daniel Webster and William Pinkney for the Bank, and Luther Martin, a delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, for Maryland.

Does Congress have the power to create a national bank? And can a state tax a federal institution?

The Court ruled that Congress does have implied powers beyond those listed in the Constitution, if an action is 'necessary and proper' to carrying out its listed powers, Congress can do it. And no, states cannot tax a federal institution because 'the power to tax involves the power to destroy.'

Marshall's unanimous opinion read the Necessary and Proper Clause broadly: 'Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end ... are constitutional.' Incorporating a bank was a permissible means of exercising Congress's powers to tax, borrow, and regulate commerce.

On the tax question, Marshall held that letting states tax federal instruments would let them defeat federal law, which the Supremacy Clause forbids. The Court did not decide whether a state could apply a general, non-discriminatory tax to a federal entity, an issue left for later cases.

Established the doctrine of implied federal powers, dramatically expanding what Congress can do. Also cemented federal supremacy over the states when the two conflict.

The ruling did not save the Bank politically. President Andrew Jackson vetoed the recharter bill in 1832, calling the Bank unconstitutional despite McCulloch, and the Bank's federal charter expired in 1836.

Nearly every major expansion of federal power, Social Security, Medicare, the interstate highway system, the Civil Rights Act, rests on the implied powers framework this case created.

The 'necessary and proper' reasoning was later used to uphold the Social Security Act in Helvering v. Davis (1937), the public-accommodations provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, and parts of the Affordable Care Act in NFIB v. Sebelius (2012).

Dred Scott was an enslaved man who had lived for years in free states and territories with his enslaver. He sued for his freedom, arguing that living on free soil had made him free. His case worked its way up to the Supreme Court over 11 years.

Army surgeon John Emerson had taken Scott to Illinois, a free state, and to Fort Snelling in the Wisconsin Territory, where the Missouri Compromise of 1820 barred slavery, for long stretches in the 1830s. Scott first sued in Missouri state court in 1846; a jury ruled for him in 1850, but the Missouri Supreme Court reversed in 1852. A fresh federal suit followed against Emerson's brother-in-law, John Sanford, whose name was misspelled 'Sandford' in the official case caption.

Was Dred Scott free because he lived in a free state? And did he have the legal standing to sue?

Chief Justice Roger Taney delivered a sweeping, catastrophic ruling: Black Americans, whether enslaved or free, were not citizens and had no right to sue in court. The Missouri Compromise (which had restricted slavery in new territories) was struck down as unconstitutional. Scott remained enslaved.

Taney wrote for a 7-2 majority; every justice filed a separate opinion, and the decision ran more than 240 pages. He asserted that the Framers regarded Black people as 'beings of an inferior order' with 'no rights which the white man was bound to respect.'

Going further, Taney held that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in the territories, making the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, only the second time an act of Congress had been struck down. Justices John McLean and Benjamin Curtis dissented, and Curtis resigned from the Court months later, in part over the case.

The decision inflamed tensions between North and South, accelerated the path to the Civil War, and deepened the national crisis over slavery. It is widely considered the Supreme Court's worst-ever decision.

It energized the new Republican Party, was denounced by Abraham Lincoln in his 1858 debates with Stephen Douglas, and is seen by most historians as hastening the sectional break that led to war in 1861.

Scott himself was returned to the Blow family, who had originally owned him, and was freed in May 1857. He died of tuberculosis in September 1858.

Was overturned, completely and explicitly, by the 14th Amendment (1868), which guaranteed citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States.

The 13th Amendment (1865) had already abolished slavery. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes later described the ruling as one of the Court's 'self-inflicted wounds.'

Homer Plessy, a man who was one-eighth Black, deliberately sat in a whites-only railroad car in Louisiana to challenge the state's Separate Car Act. He was arrested as planned. His lawyers argued that forced separation violated the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection.

The test case was organized by the Comite des Citoyens, a group of Black and Creole activists in New Orleans. They chose Plessy because he could pass as white, and arranged for the East Louisiana Railroad, which resented the cost of running separate cars, to cooperate. Louisiana's Separate Car Act had been enacted in 1890.

Does a state law requiring separate train cars for Black and white passengers violate the Constitution?

The Court ruled 7–1 that separate facilities were constitutional as long as they were 'equal.' Justice John Marshall Harlan was the lone dissenter, writing that 'our Constitution is color-blind.'

Justice Henry Billings Brown's majority opinion held that the 14th Amendment secured legal and political equality but not 'social' equality, and that any stigma from separation existed 'solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it.'

Harlan, a former Kentucky slaveholder, warned that the ruling would 'in time, prove to be quite as pernicious as the decision made by this tribunal in the Dred Scott case.' Justice David Brewer did not participate.

Gave legal cover to Jim Crow laws across the South for six decades, segregated schools, restaurants, hospitals, water fountains, buses, and more.

The 'equal' half of the doctrine was almost never honored: Southern states routinely spent several times as much per white pupil as per Black pupil, and separation was extended to nearly every public and private space.

Directly overturned by Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Now held up as a cautionary example of how the Court can be catastrophically wrong.

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund spent nearly two decades narrowing the doctrine in cases such as Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1938) and Sweatt v. Painter (1950) before Brown held that separate schools are 'inherently unequal.'

During World War I, Charles Schenck distributed leaflets urging men to resist the military draft. He was charged under the Espionage Act of 1917, which made it illegal to interfere with military recruitment.

Schenck was general secretary of the Socialist Party of America. The party mailed roughly 15,000 leaflets to men called for the draft, comparing conscription to the involuntary servitude barred by the 13th Amendment and urging recipients to 'assert your rights.'

Does the First Amendment protect speech urging resistance to the draft during wartime?

The unanimous Court upheld his conviction. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote that the question is whether the words 'create a clear and present danger' of bringing about evils that Congress has power to prevent. In wartime, urging draft resistance was like 'falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.'

Holmes added that 'the character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done,' so speech protected in peacetime could be punished when circumstances made it dangerous.

Months later, in Abrams v. United States (1919), Holmes broke with the Court and dissented as it upheld further Espionage Act convictions, setting out a more speech-protective view and the 'marketplace of ideas' metaphor.

Established that First Amendment protections are not absolute, speech that creates a 'clear and present danger' can be restricted.

More than 2,000 people were prosecuted under the Espionage and Sedition Acts during and after World War I, including Socialist leader Eugene V. Debs, whose ten-year sentence the Court upheld the same year in Debs v. United States.

The 'clear and present danger' test has been modified significantly by later cases (especially Brandenburg v. Ohio, 1969). The 'shouting fire' line is the most quoted metaphor in First Amendment law, though it's often misquoted and misapplied.

Brandenburg replaced the test outright, protecting even advocacy of illegal action unless it is 'directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action' and likely to do so. The 'fire in a theater' phrase was rhetoric, not a legal rule, and courts do not apply it as one.

Linda Brown, a Black third-grader in Topeka, Kansas, was denied admission to her neighborhood school because of her race. Her father, Oliver Brown, joined a class-action lawsuit organized by the NAACP. The case was argued twice before the Supreme Court by NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall, who would later become the first Black Supreme Court Justice.

Brown consolidated five cases from Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, and the District of Columbia. The NAACP's strategy, designed by Charles Hamilton Houston and executed by Marshall, leaned on social-science evidence, including the Clark 'doll studies' referenced in the opinion's Footnote 11, about the psychological harm of segregation.

The case was first argued in December 1952, then set for reargument in December 1953 after Chief Justice Fred Vinson died and was succeeded by Earl Warren, the former governor of California.

Does racial segregation in public schools violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment?

The unanimous Court, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, ruled that separate schools are inherently unequal. 'Separate but equal' was dead. Warren worked behind the scenes for months to make the decision unanimous, knowing a divided Court would embolden resistance.

Warren kept the opinion short, plain, and unemotional, about 11 pages, so newspapers could reprint it in full. Its core holding was that 'in the field of public education the doctrine of separate but equal has no place.'

A companion case, Bolling v. Sharpe, struck down segregation in D.C. schools under the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause, since the 14th Amendment binds only the states. In 1955, 'Brown II' ordered desegregation 'with all deliberate speed,' a phrase that allowed years of delay.

The ruling launched the modern Civil Rights Movement. It did not end segregation overnight, massive resistance from states and school districts stretched integration fights for decades, but it removed the legal foundation that had justified apartheid-style separation.

Virginia briefly closed some public schools rather than integrate, 101 members of Congress signed the 1956 'Southern Manifesto' attacking the decision, and in 1957 President Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne to enforce integration at Little Rock Central High School.

One of the most celebrated decisions in American history. Thurgood Marshall's courtroom victory here is commemorated on the building bearing his name in Washington, D.C.

A decade after Brown, only about 2 percent of Black students in the former Confederate states attended integrated schools. Real change followed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which let Washington cut off funds to segregated districts, and rulings such as Green v. County School Board (1968) and Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg (1971).

Cleveland police burst into Dollree Mapp's home looking for a bombing suspect. They had no warrant. They didn't find the suspect, but they found obscene materials and arrested Mapp for possessing them. She was convicted. Her lawyers initially appealed on First Amendment grounds, the exclusionary rule question almost emerged by accident.

The officers were seeking a suspect tied to a case connected to numbers racketeer Don King. When Mapp demanded a warrant, an officer waved a piece of paper; no valid warrant was ever produced at trial. Police found the allegedly obscene books and photos in a trunk in the basement.

Does the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches require that illegally obtained evidence be excluded from state criminal trials?

Yes. The Court extended the 'exclusionary rule', previously applied only to federal courts, to all state courts. Evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment cannot be used to convict someone, regardless of how guilty they might be.

Justice Tom Clark's 6-3 opinion carried the federal rule of Weeks v. United States (1914) into the states and overruled Wolf v. Colorado (1949). Without exclusion, Clark wrote, the Fourth Amendment would be reduced to 'a form of words.'

Fundamentally changed police investigative practices nationwide. Prosecutors who relied on warrantless searches suddenly found their evidence thrown out.

Departments across the country rewrote search-and-warrant training, and studies in the following years measured increases in warrant applications and in motions to suppress evidence.

The exclusionary rule remains one of the most debated in criminal law. Critics argue it lets guilty people go free on 'technicalities.' Supporters argue the alternative, letting police ignore the Constitution whenever convenient, is worse.

The Court later carved out major exceptions: 'good faith' reliance on a defective warrant (United States v. Leon, 1984), inevitable discovery (Nix v. Williams, 1984), and attenuation (Utah v. Strieff, 2016).

Clarence Earl Gideon was a drifter charged with breaking into a Florida pool hall. He appeared in court without a lawyer, asked the judge to appoint one because he couldn't afford one, and was told Florida only provided lawyers in capital cases. He represented himself, was convicted, and spent time in prison handwriting a petition to the Supreme Court in pencil.

The charge, breaking into the Bay Harbor Pool Room in Panama City, was a felony carrying up to five years. From the Florida State Prison, Gideon mailed a five-page handwritten petition to the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case and appointed future Justice Abe Fortas, then a leading Washington lawyer, to argue for him.

Does the Sixth Amendment right to counsel require states to provide lawyers to defendants who can't afford one?

Unanimous. The Court overturned Betts v. Brady (1942) and held that the right to counsel is fundamental. Any person facing a serious criminal charge who cannot afford an attorney must be provided one by the government.

Justice Hugo Black, who had dissented in Betts 21 years earlier, wrote the opinion. 'Lawyers in criminal courts are necessities, not luxuries,' he said, and the Sixth Amendment right binds the states through the 14th Amendment.

Created the public defender system as we know it today. Thousands of prisoners were immediately eligible for new trials.

Florida had to retry or release large numbers of inmates. Gideon was retried in 1963 with an appointed lawyer and acquitted in about an hour, though chronic underfunding of indigent defense has been documented ever since.

Gideon's hand-penciled petition, now housed at the Library of Congress, is one of the most celebrated documents in American legal history. Anthony Lewis's book 'Gideon's Trumpet' made his story famous.

The right was extended to any charge that results in jail time in Argersinger v. Hamlin (1972) and to a defendant's first appeal in Douglas v. California, decided the same day as Gideon.

Connecticut had a law making it illegal for anyone, including married couples, to use contraceptives. Estelle Griswold, the executive director of Planned Parenthood in Connecticut, deliberately opened a birth control clinic to challenge the law. She was arrested and fined $100.

The 1879 statute banned the 'use' of any contraceptive drug or device and criminalized assisting others. Griswold and Dr. C. Lee Buxton of Yale opened a New Haven clinic on November 1, 1961, and were arrested days later. An earlier challenge, Poe v. Ullman (1961), had been dismissed as not yet ripe.

Does the Constitution protect a married couple's right to use contraception without government interference?

Yes. Justice Douglas found that the Constitution contains 'penumbras' and 'emanations' from specific amendments that together create a zone of privacy. The idea of police searching married couples' bedrooms for signs of contraceptive use was, the Court said, 'repulsive to the notions of privacy surrounding the marriage relationship.'

Douglas pointed to the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Amendments as the source of these 'zones of privacy.' Concurrences by Justice Goldberg (stressing the Ninth Amendment) and Justices Harlan and White (grounding the right in 14th Amendment due process) offered other rationales. Justices Black and Stewart dissented; Stewart called the law 'uncommonly silly' but not unconstitutional.

Struck down Connecticut's contraception ban. More significantly, established the constitutional right to privacy, a right not explicitly mentioned anywhere in the document.

It also doomed a similar Massachusetts law, which the Court struck down as applied to unmarried people in Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972).

The implied right to privacy became the legal foundation for Roe v. Wade (1973), Lawrence v. Texas (2003, striking down anti-sodomy laws), and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015). The Dobbs decision (2022) raised questions about its long-term stability.

The Dobbs majority stated that its reasoning did not undermine Griswold, while a concurrence urged the Court to reconsider that entire line of cases.

Ernesto Miranda was arrested in Phoenix, Arizona for kidnapping and rape. After two hours of police interrogation, with no lawyer present and no one telling him he could refuse to talk, he signed a confession. He had no idea he didn't have to speak.

The Supreme Court consolidated four separate cases under the Miranda name. Miranda's signed statement included a printed paragraph asserting the confession was voluntary and made 'with full knowledge of my legal rights,' even though police had explained none of them.

Are confessions obtained without informing suspects of their rights admissible in court?

Chief Justice Warren held that the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and the Sixth Amendment right to counsel require police to inform suspects of their rights before custodial interrogation. If they don't, any confession is inadmissible.

Warren, a former district attorney, wrote for a 5-4 majority that custodial questioning is inherently coercive, so a suspect can waive these rights only 'knowingly and intelligently.' Justices Harlan, Stewart, White, and Clark dissented, warning the rules would handicap legitimate policing.

Congress tried to override Miranda in federal cases with a 1968 statute, but the Court held 7-2 in Dickerson v. United States (2000) that Miranda is a constitutional rule Congress cannot repeal by ordinary law.

Created the 'Miranda warning', those familiar words every TV cop reads from a card. Police departments across the country had to change their interrogation practices overnight.

Miranda's own conviction was thrown out, but he was retried without the confession, convicted on other evidence, and imprisoned. He was stabbed to death in a 1976 bar fight; the suspect was read his Miranda rights and chose to stay silent.

Miranda warnings are now global shorthand for the concept of legal rights upon arrest. The decision remains controversial among law enforcement but is deeply embedded in American legal culture.

Later rulings trimmed it: Harris v. New York (1971) let unwarned statements be used to impeach a testifying defendant, New York v. Quarles (1984) created a 'public safety' exception, and Berghuis v. Thompkins (2010) held a suspect must expressly invoke the right to silence.

Richard Loving (white) and Mildred Jeter (Black and Native American) were married in Washington, D.C., then returned home to Virginia, where interracial marriage was a crime. Police raided their bedroom in the middle of the night and arrested them. They were convicted and sentenced to a year in prison, suspended on the condition they leave Virginia and not return together for 25 years.

They were charged under Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924. In 1959 the trial judge, Leon Bazile, suspended the sentence but wrote that 'Almighty God created the races ... and he placed them on separate continents.' The couple moved to Washington and, with ACLU lawyers Bernard Cohen and Philip Hirschkop, began challenging the conviction in 1963.

Does Virginia's anti-miscegenation law violate the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection and Due Process clauses?

Unanimous. The Court held that laws restricting marriage based on race violated both the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses. 'The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.'

Chief Justice Warren's opinion found that the statute rested on 'invidious racial discrimination' with no purpose 'independent of' that discrimination, and that the right to marry is a 'fundamental freedom' that a state cannot condition on race.

Struck down anti-miscegenation laws in 16 states overnight.

All 16 remaining bans, every one of them in the South, became unenforceable immediately. Alabama did not formally strike its dead-letter ban from the state constitution until a 2000 referendum, which passed with about 60 percent of the vote.

The legal and moral logic of Loving became the direct foundation for Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), which extended the right to marry to same-sex couples.

Loving was also cited as controlling in Zablocki v. Redhail (1978) and Turner v. Safley (1987). June 12, the date of the decision, is now widely marked as 'Loving Day.'

The Nixon administration tried to prevent the New York Times and Washington Post from publishing the Pentagon Papers, a secret Defense Department history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam that revealed the government had been systematically lying to the public about the war. The government argued publication would cause 'grave and irreparable' national security harm.

Daniel Ellsberg, a former Defense Department analyst, had leaked the roughly 7,000-page study. The Times began publishing excerpts on June 13, 1971; the administration then won a temporary restraining order, the first federal injunction against a newspaper in U.S. history, after three installments, and the Post launched its own series.

The litigation moved at extraordinary speed. The case was argued on June 26 and decided on June 30, 1971.

Can the government use 'prior restraint', stopping publication before it happens, to prevent newspapers from publishing classified documents?

The Court ruled 6–3 against the government. The press has a strong presumption against prior restraint. The government failed to meet the very heavy burden required to justify stopping publication before it happens.

The decision itself was a brief, unsigned per curiam opinion. Each of the nine justices then wrote separately, producing nine opinions ranging from near-absolute protection (Black and Douglas) to a willingness to permit restraint on stronger facts (Harlan, Burger, and Blackmun in dissent).

The papers were published. They severely damaged public trust in the government's handling of the Vietnam War.

The Justice Department's separate criminal case against Ellsberg collapsed in 1973 when the judge dismissed all charges after learning of government wiretapping and a White House 'Plumbers' break-in at Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office.

The gold standard case for press freedom and the strongest statement against prior restraint. Journalists and news organizations cite it constantly in fights over publication of sensitive government information.

No U.S. court has since imposed a prior restraint on the press that survived appeal. The decision is routinely invoked in disputes over WikiLeaks, the 2013 Snowden disclosures, and other national-security reporting.

Norma McCorvey (using the pseudonym 'Jane Roe') was a pregnant Texas woman who wanted an abortion but couldn't get one legally in her state. Texas, like most states at the time, banned abortion except to save the mother's life. Her lawyers argued the law violated her constitutional right to privacy.

McCorvey filed suit in 1970 against Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade and was represented by recent law graduates Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee. She gave birth and placed the child for adoption before the case was decided, and years later became an anti-abortion activist.

The case was argued twice, in December 1971 and again in October 1972 after Justices Powell and Rehnquist joined the Court.

Does the Constitution protect a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy?

The Court ruled 7–2 that the right to privacy established in Griswold extends to a woman's decision to have an abortion. It created a trimester framework: states couldn't restrict abortion in the first trimester, could regulate it in the second, and could ban it in the third (except for the mother's health).

Justice Harry Blackmun's opinion tied state regulatory power to the trimester structure and to fetal 'viability.' Justices Byron White and William Rehnquist dissented, White calling the decision 'an exercise of raw judicial power.'

Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) discarded the trimester framework but reaffirmed what it called Roe's 'central holding' under a new 'undue burden' standard.

Established a nationwide constitutional right to abortion, striking down laws in 46 states.

It also created a durable national political movement and made Supreme Court nominations a central battleground in American politics for the next half century.

One of the most politically divisive decisions in American history. After nearly 50 years, it was overturned by Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022), which held there is no constitutional right to abortion and returned the issue to the states.

Dobbs was decided 6-3 on the judgment and 5-4 on overruling Roe outright. Within a year, roughly a dozen states had banned or sharply restricted abortion while others moved to expand access.

During the Watergate scandal investigation, special prosecutor Leon Jaworski subpoenaed President Nixon's secret White House tape recordings. Nixon refused, claiming absolute executive privilege, the president's right to keep communications confidential. He argued a sitting president could not be compelled by a court to produce evidence.

The Watergate grand jury had named Nixon an unindicted co-conspirator in March 1974. Jaworski subpoenaed tapes and documents tied to 64 conversations for the trial of seven former Nixon aides. Nixon released edited transcripts and moved to quash the subpoena, asserting an unreviewable privilege.

The case was argued on July 8, 1974, and decided just 16 days later, on July 24. Justice William Rehnquist, a former Nixon Justice Department official, recused himself, leaving an 8-0 vote.

Does the President have an absolute constitutional privilege to withhold evidence from criminal proceedings?

The Court unanimously held that while presidents do have a limited executive privilege, it is not absolute. It cannot be used to obstruct criminal justice. Nixon had to hand over the tapes.

Chief Justice Warren Burger, himself a Nixon appointee, wrote that it is for the courts, not the President, to say what the law is, reaffirming Marbury. A generalized interest in confidentiality could not outweigh a specific, demonstrated need for evidence in a pending criminal trial.

The Court recognized for the first time that executive privilege has a constitutional footing, strongest for military, diplomatic, or national-security secrets, but held it is presumptive rather than absolute and subject to private review by a judge.

Nixon resigned 16 days after the ruling. The tapes proved his direct involvement in the Watergate cover-up.

The recordings included the June 23, 1972 'smoking gun' conversation showing Nixon had ordered the FBI's Watergate investigation obstructed six days after the break-in. He resigned on August 9, 1974, the only U.S. president ever to do so.

Established that executive privilege exists but has limits, and that no president, no matter how powerful, is above a court order. Cited regularly in every subsequent presidential legal battle.

It was central to litigation over the Clinton grand jury subpoena in the 1990s and to Trump v. Vance (2020) and Trump v. Thompson (2022), where courts relied on it to reject sweeping claims of presidential immunity from legal process.

Gregory Lee Johnson burned an American flag outside the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas as a political protest. He was convicted under a Texas law banning flag desecration. He argued it was symbolic political speech protected by the First Amendment.

Johnson burned the flag outside Dallas City Hall while other demonstrators chanted; no one was injured. He was the only one of roughly 100 protesters charged, was convicted of 'desecration of a venerated object,' and was sentenced to a year in jail and a $2,000 fine.

Is burning the American flag a protected form of symbolic speech under the First Amendment?

The Court ruled 5–4 that flag burning is symbolic political speech, exactly the kind of expression the First Amendment was designed to protect. Justice Brennan wrote that the government cannot prohibit expression of an idea simply because society finds it disagreeable.

The unusual majority paired liberal Justices Brennan and Marshall with conservatives Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy. Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice John Paul Stevens dissented, Stevens arguing the flag is a unique national symbol Congress may protect.

Struck down flag desecration laws in 48 states overnight. Congress passed the Flag Protection Act of 1989 in response, the Court struck that down too.

The Court invalidated the federal Flag Protection Act 5-4 the next year in United States v. Eichman (1990). Proposed constitutional amendments to allow flag-desecration bans have repeatedly fallen short in Congress, most narrowly by a single Senate vote in 2006.

One of the most controversial free speech decisions ever. Shows that the First Amendment protects speech we hate, not just speech we like. The alternative, letting the government punish offensive speech, is a far greater danger.

It is now a standard teaching example of protection for symbolic and unpopular expression, cited alongside Tinker v. Des Moines (1969) in later cases about conduct as speech.

The 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore came down to Florida, and its 25 electoral votes. The margin was razor-thin (eventually certified at 537 votes out of nearly 6 million cast). Manual recounts were underway in several counties when the case reached the Supreme Court.

After the November 7 vote, an automatic machine recount left Bush narrowly ahead. On December 8 the Florida Supreme Court ordered a statewide manual recount of 'undervote' ballots. The U.S. Supreme Court stayed that recount on December 9 and heard argument on December 11.

Did the Florida Supreme Court's order for a manual recount violate the Equal Protection Clause because different counties used different standards to evaluate ballots?

The Court ruled 5–4 that yes, the inconsistent standards for counting ballots violated equal protection. But it also ruled, controversially, that there wasn't enough time to implement a constitutional recount before the federal deadline. The recount stopped. Bush won Florida. Bush won the presidency.

Seven justices agreed there was an equal-protection problem; the Court split 5-4 on the remedy. Because Florida law aimed at the December 12 federal 'safe harbor' date, and that was the day of the decision, the majority ended the recount instead of returning the case for uniform standards.

Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer dissented. Stevens wrote that 'the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.'

George W. Bush became the 43rd President of the United States. Gore conceded the next day.

A later ballot review by a consortium of news organizations concluded the result would probably have held under the limited recount then underway, though some broader counting scenarios favored Gore. Gore won the national popular vote by about 540,000.

The majority opinion explicitly stated it should not be used as precedent in future cases, an almost unprecedented disclaimer. It remains one of the most criticized decisions in modern history, with many legal scholars arguing the Court had no constitutional business stopping a state's election recount.

The dispute spurred the Help America Vote Act of 2002, which funded the replacement of punch-card machines and created the federal Election Assistance Commission.

Citizens United, a conservative nonprofit, made a critical film about Hillary Clinton and wanted to air it close to the 2008 Democratic primary. Federal campaign finance law prohibited corporations from spending money on 'electioneering communications' within 30 days of a primary. Citizens United argued this violated their First Amendment rights.

The group wanted to distribute 'Hillary: The Movie' through video-on-demand. Lower courts held this violated the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, known as McCain-Feingold. The Supreme Court then ordered reargument on the broader question of whether to overrule Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce (1990) and part of McConnell v. FEC (2003).

Can the government limit how much corporations and unions spend on political advocacy?

The Court ruled 5–4 that political spending is a form of protected speech. The government cannot restrict independent political expenditures by corporations, associations, or labor unions.

Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion held that 'political speech does not lose First Amendment protection simply because its source is a corporation.' The Court upheld the law's disclosure requirements 8-1. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote a 90-page dissent.

Opened the floodgates to unlimited 'independent' political spending. Super PACs were born. Campaign spending exploded, outside spending in federal elections jumped from roughly $340 million in 2008 to more than $3 billion in the 2020 cycle, according to OpenSecrets.

Two months after the ruling, the D.C. Circuit's SpeechNow.org v. FEC decision applied its logic to permit 'super PACs' that raise unlimited sums for independent expenditures.

One of the most controversial modern decisions. Critics argue it allowed billionaires and corporations to drown out ordinary citizens in politics. Supporters argue restricting political spending is censorship. It fundamentally changed how American elections are financed.

National polls have consistently found broad, bipartisan public disapproval. Constitutional amendments to overturn it have been introduced in Congress repeatedly without passing, and several states and cities have adopted resolutions calling for one.

Jim Obergefell married his terminally ill partner John Arthur in Maryland (one of the states where it was legal), then returned to Ohio, which didn't recognize the marriage. When Arthur died, Ohio refused to list Obergefell as his surviving spouse on the death certificate. Obergefell sued. The case was consolidated with challenges from several other states.

The Court combined cases from Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee after the Sixth Circuit became the only federal appeals court to uphold state same-sex marriage bans, creating the circuit split that made Supreme Court review likely. It followed United States v. Windsor (2013), which had struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act's refusal to recognize such marriages.

Does the Constitution require states to license and recognize same-sex marriages?

Yes, 5–4. Justice Kennedy wrote that the right to marry is fundamental under the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the 14th Amendment. That right extends equally to same-sex couples. 'No union is more profound than marriage.'

Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito each filed separate dissents, focused largely on whether the question should have been decided by voters and legislatures rather than the Court.

Legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states, striking down marriage bans in the 13 states that still had them.

In 2022, amid concerns raised in Dobbs, Congress passed the Respect for Marriage Act, requiring federal and interstate recognition of existing marriages, though it does not itself force states to issue licenses.

Built directly on the logic of Loving v. Virginia. The Dobbs decision (2022) raised questions about its future stability, as Justice Thomas explicitly called for reconsidering it.

By the mid-2020s, national polling put public support for same-sex marriage around 70 percent, up from about 42 percent when Massachusetts became the first state to legalize it in 2004 and 27 percent in 1996 (Gallup).