United States Government​

Supreme Court Cases

Because the Constitution is vague and ambiguous in many places, it is often possible for critics to fault the Supreme Court for misinterpreting it. Among the most important doctrinal sources used by the Supreme Court have been the commerce, due-process, and equal-protection clauses of the Constitution. It also has often ruled on controversies involving civil liberties, including freedom of speech and the right of privacy. Much of its work consists of clarifying, refining, and testing the Constitution’s philosophic ideals and translating them into working principles. On divisive issues such as abortion, affirmative action, school prayer, and flag burning, the Court’s decisions have aroused considerable opposition and controversy, with opponents sometimes seeking constitutional amendments to overturn the Court’s decisions.

See list of Supreme Court Decisions

READ MORE

Marbury v. Madison (1803)​

Constitutional judicial review is usually considered to have begun with the assertion by Chief Justice John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison (1803) that the U.S. Supreme Court and lower courts had the power to invalidate legislation enacted by Congress, as well as executive and administrative actions, that it deemed inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution. The case arose after the administration of Pres. Thomas Jefferson withheld from William Marbury a judgeship commission that had been formalized in the last days of the preceding John Adams administration. Read more.

Related Articles

Judiciary Act of 1801

In its final weeks, the lame-duck Federalist Congress used the Judiciary Act of 1801 to create 16 new circuit judgeships, which the outgoing administration of Pres. John Adams then filled with Federalists in an effort to preserve the party’s control of the judiciary and to frustrate the legislative agenda of president-elect Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic-Republican Party.
Read more

Federalist Party

In 1791 Alexander Hamilton and other proponents of a strong central government formed the Federalist Party, which held power until 1801.
Read more

Democratic-Republican Party

In 1792, led by Thomas Jefferson, those who favored states’ rights and a strict interpretation of the Constitution formed the Republican (later Democratic-Republican) Party to oppose the Federalist Party.
Read more

Dred Scott v. John F.A. Sandford (1857)

On March 6, 1857, the Supreme Court ruled in Dred Scott v. John F.A. Sandford, that having lived in a free state and territory did not entitle a slave, Dred Scott, to his freedom. In essence, the decision argued that as a slave Scott was not a citizen and could not sue in a federal court. The majority opinion by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney also stated that Congress had no power to exclude slavery from the territories (thus invalidating the Missouri Compromise [1820]) and that African Americans could never become U.S. citizens. Read more.

Related articles

Missouri Compromise

In the Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress had exceeded its authority in the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which allowed for the admission of Missouri as the 24th state, because it had no power to forbid or abolish slavery in the territories west of Missouri and north of latitude 36°30′.
Read more

Roger B. Taney

Roger B. Taney, who became chief Justice of the United States in 1836, is best remembered for the majority opinion he delivered in Dred Scott v. John F.A. Sandford in 1857. He argued, in essence, that a slave was not a citizen and could not sue in a federal court and that African Americans “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”
Read more

How the Dred Scott Decision Affected the U.S. Election of 1860

When the Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott decision that the Missouri Compromise’s prohibition of slavery in territories was unconstitutional, opponents of slavery rallied around the Republican Party, whose candidate, Abraham Lincoln, won the 1860 presidential election. His victory precipitated secession and ultimately the Civil War.
Read more

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

In its Plessy v. Ferguson ruling in 1896, the Supreme Court put forward the controversial “separate but equal” doctrine, according to which laws mandating racial segregation in public accommodations were constitutional provided that the separate facilities for each race were equal. The ruling essentially established the constitutionality of racial segregation and the Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation in the South between the end of Reconstruction and the 1950s. Read more.

Related articles

Homer Plessy

Homer Plessy, an African American shoemaker and activist, was arrested on June 7, 1892, for violating the Separate Car Act (1890), which mandated the racial segregation of railroad cars. In the process, he became the plaintiff in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).
Read more

Jim Crow law

Jim Crow laws were any of the laws that enforced racial segregation in the American South between the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and the beginning of the civil rights movement in the 1950s.
Read more

Racial segregation

Racial segregation, the practice of restricting people to certain areas of residence or to separate institutions (schools, churches) and facilities (restaurants, restrooms) on the basis of race or alleged race, historically provided a means of maintaining the economic advantages and superior social status of whites in the United States.
Read more
Featured Videos

World History

History provides a chronological, statistical, and cultural record of the events, people, and movements that have made an impact on humankind and the world at large throughout the ages.

Watch More Videos

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954)

On May 17, 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously (9–0) that racial segregation in public schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits the states from denying equal protection of the laws to any person within their jurisdictions. The decision declared that separate educational facilities for white and African American students were inherently unequal. It thus rejected the “separate but equal” doctrine, advanced by the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). The ruling helped inspire the American civil rights movement of the late 1950s and 1960s. Read more.

Related articles

American civil rights movement

Through nonviolent protest, the civil rights movement that came to prominence in the mid-1950s broke the pattern of public facilities’ being segregated by race in the South and achieved the most important breakthrough in equal-rights legislation for African Americans since the Reconstruction period.
Read more

Equal protection

The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees “the equal protection of the laws,” that is, that persons similarly situated must be similarly treated.
Read more

Thurgood Marshall

Having established a reputation as a formidable advocate of social change by successfully arguing Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka before the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall became the Supreme Court’s first African American justice in 1967.
Read more

Roe v. Wade (1973)

In its Roe v. Wade decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on January 22, 1973, that unduly restrictive state regulation of abortion is unconstitutional. In his majority opinion Justice Harry A. Blackmun held that a set of Texas statutes criminalizing abortion in most instances violated a woman’s constitutional right of privacy, which it found to be implicit in the liberty guarantee of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Read more.

Related articles

Due process

The Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution provides that “No person shall…be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” but, because this amendment was held inapplicable to state actions that might violate an individual’s constitutional rights, it took the Fourteenth Amendment to make the states subject to a federally enforceable due process restraint on their legislative and procedural activities.
Read more

Norma McCorvey

Activist Norma McCorvey was the original plaintiff (anonymized as Jane Roe) in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade, which made abortion legal throughout the United States.
Read more

Harry A. Blackmun

Six justices joined Harry A. Blackmun in the majority opinion of Roe v. Wade, but Blackmun, who believed deeply in a citizen’s right to privacy without governmental interference, was linked with and characterized by that decision for the rest of his career.
Read more

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010)

On January 21, 2010, the Supreme Court ruled (5–4) in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that laws that prevented corporations and unions from using their general treasury funds for independent “electioneering communications” (political advertising) violated the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech. Read more.

Related articles

Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002

The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (the McCain-Feingold Act) sought to eliminate the increased use of so-called soft money to fund advertising by political parties. Section 203 of the act—which expanded the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971’s ban on corporate and union contributions to include “electioneering communications” paid for with corporate or union general treasury funds—was invalided by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010).
Read more

Federal Election Campaign Act

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission invalidated Section 441(b) of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 which had established a ban on corporate and union contributions and expenditures “in connection with” political elections.
Read more

Political action committee

Generally formed by corporations, labor unions, trade associations, or other organizations or individuals, political action committees channel the voluntary contributions they raise to candidates for elective office, primarily in the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Read more
Featured EXPLAINER SERIES

WWII Explained in 5 Questions

SEE ALL EXPLAINED VIDEOS
X