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Definition
| 1997 - The Court agreed to permit public school teachers to go into parochial schools during school hours to provide remedial education to disadvantaged students because it was not an excessive entanglement of church and state. |
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Definition
| 1999 - In a case involving sovereign immunity, the Court ruled that Congress lacks the authority to abrogate a state’s immunity in its own courts. |
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| Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition |
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Definition
| 2002 - The Court ruled that the Child Online Protection Act (1998) was unconstitutional because it was too vague in its reliance on “community standards” to define what is harmful to minors. |
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Definition
| 1968 - The Court declared that the one-person, one-vote standard applied to counties as well as congressional and state legislative districts. |
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Definition
| 1962 - Watershed case establishing the principle of one-person, one-vote, which requires that each legislative district within a state have the same number of eligible voters so that representation is equitably based on population. |
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Definition
| 1833 - Decision that limited the application of the Bill of Rights to the actions of Congress alone. |
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Definition
| 1969 - Incorporated the Fifth Amendment’s double jeopardy clause. |
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| Board of Regents v. Southworth |
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Definition
| 2000 - Unanimous ruling from the Supreme Court which stated that public universities could charge students a mandatory activities fee that could be used to facilitate extracurricular student political speech so long as the programs are neutral in their application. |
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| 1997 - The Court ruled that Congress could not force the Religious Freedom Restoration act upon the state governments. |
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Definition
| 1986 - Unsuccessful attempt to challenge Georgia’s sodomy law. |
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Term
| Boy Scouts of America v. Dale |
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Definition
| 2000 - The Court ruled that the Boy Scouts could exclude gays from serving as scoutmasters because a private group has the right to set its own moral code. |
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Definition
| 1873 - A woman argued that Illinois’s refusal to allow her to practice law despite the fact that that she had passed the bar violated her citizenship rights under the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; the justice denied her claim. |
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| 1998 - The Court ruled that individuals infected with HIV but not sick enough to qualify as having AIDS were protected by discrimination by the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). |
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Definition
| 1969 - The Court fashioned the direct incitement test for deciding whether certain kinds of speech could be regulated by the government. This test holds that advocacy of illegal action is protected by the First Amendment unless imminent action is intended and likely to occur. |
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Term
| Brown v. Board of Education |
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Definition
| 1954 - Supreme Court decision holding that school segregation in inherently unconstitutional because it violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection; marked the end of legal segregation in the United States. |
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Term
| Brown v. Board of Education, II |
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Definition
| 1955 - Follow-up to Brown v. Board of Education, this case laid out the process for school desegregation and established the concept of dismantling segregationist systems “with all deliberate speed.” |
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| Brown University v. Cohen |
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Definition
| 1997 - Landmark Title IX case that puts all colleges and universities on notice that discrimination against women would not be tolerated, even when, as in the case of Brown University, the university had tremendously expanded sports opportunities for women. |
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Definition
| 1976 - The Court ruled that money spent by an individual or political committee in support or opposition of a candidate (but independent of the candidate’s campaign) was a form of symbolic speech, and therefore could not be limited under the First Amendment. |
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Term
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Definition
| 2000 - Controversial 2000 election case that made the final decision on the Florida recounts, and thus, the result of the 2000 election. The Rehnquist Court broke from tradition in this case by refusing to defer to the state court’s decision. |
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Definition
| 1940 - The case in which the Supreme Court incorporated the freedom of religion, ruling that the freedom to believe is absolute, but the freedom to act is subject to the regulation of society. |
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Definition
| 1997 - The Supreme Court refused to allow Georgia to require all candidates for state office to pass a urinalysis thirty days before qualifying for nomination or election, concluding that this law violated the search-and-seizure clause. |
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Term
| Chaplinksy v. New Hampshire |
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Definition
| 1942 - Established the Supreme Court’s rationale for distinguishing between protected and unprotected speech. |
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Term
| Chicago B&O Railroad Co. v. Chicago |
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Definition
| 1897 - Incorporated the Fifth Amendment’s just compensation clause. |
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Definition
| 1793 - The Court interpreted its jurisdiction under Article III, Section 2, of the Constitution to include the right to hear suits brought by a citizen of one state against another state. |
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Definition
| 1883 - Name attached to five cases brought under the Civil Rights Act (1875). In 1883, the Supreme Court decided that discrimination in a variety of public accommodations, including theatres, hotels, and railroads, could not be prohibited by the act because it was private and not state discrimination. |
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Term
| Clinton v. City of New York |
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Definition
| 1998 - The Court ruled that the line-item veto was unconstitutional because it gave powers to the president denied him by the U.S. Constitution. |
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Definition
| 1997 - The Court refused to reverse a lower court’s decision that allowed Paula Jones’s civil case against President Bill Clinton to proceed. |
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Definition
| 1821 - The Court defined its jurisdiction to include the right to review all state criminal cases; additionally, this case built on Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee, clarifying the Court’s power to declare state laws unconstitutional. |
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Term
| Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee v. Federal Election Committee |
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Definition
| 1996 - The Supreme Court extended its ruling in Buckley v. Valeo to also include political parties. |
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Definition
| 1958 - Case wherein the court broke with tradition and issued a unanimous decision against the Little Rock School Board ruling that the district’s evasive schemes to avoid the Brown II decision were illegal. |
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Definition
| 1976 - The Court ruled that keeping drunk drivers off the roads may be an important governmental objective, but allowing women aged eighteen to twenty-one to drink alcoholic beverages while prohibiting men of the same age from drinking is not substantially related to that goal. |
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Term
| Cruzan by Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health |
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Definition
| 1990 - The Court rejected any attempt to extend the right to privacy into the area of assisted suicide. However, the Court did note that individuals could terminate medical treatment if they were able to express, or had done so in writing, their desire to have medical treatment terminated in the event they became incompetent. |
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Definition
| 1937 - Incorporated the First Amendment’s right to freedom of assembly. |
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Definition
| 1973 - In combination with Roe v. Wade, established a woman’s right to an abortion. |
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Definition
| 1857 - Concluded that the U.S. Congress lacked the constitutional authority to bar slavery in the territories; this decision narrowed the scope of national power while it enhanced that of the states. This case marks the first time since Marbury v. Madison that the Supreme Court found an act of Congress unconstitutional. |
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Definition
| 1968 - Incorporated the Sixth Amendment’s trial by jury clause. |
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Definition
| 1962 - The Court ruled that the recitation in public classrooms of a nondenominational prayer was unconstitutional and a violation of the establishment clause. |
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Definition
| 1810 - The Court ruled that state legislatures could not make laws that violated contracts or grants made by earlier legislative action. |
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Term
| Florida Prepaid v. College Savings Bank |
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Definition
| 1999 - The Court ruled that Congress does not have the authority under the commerce clause or the patent clause to change patent laws in a manner that would negatively affect a state’s right to assert immunity from suit. |
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Definition
| 1972 - The Supreme Court used this case to end capital punishment, at least in the short run. (The case was overturned by Gregg v. Georgia in 1976.) |
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| Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transport Authority |
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Definition
| 1985 - In this case, the court ruled that Congress has the broad power to impose its will on state and local governments, even in areas that have traditionally been left to state and local discretion. |
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Definition
| 1824 - The Court upheld broad congressional power over interstate commerce. |
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Definition
| 1963 - Granted indigents the right to counsel. |
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Definition
| 1925 - Incorporated the free speech clause of the First Amendment, ruling that the states were not completely free to limit forms of political expression. |
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Definition
| 2003 - The Court struck down the University of Michigan’s undergraduate point system, which gave minority applicants twenty automatic points simply because they were minorities. |
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Definition
| 1963 - Court held that voting by unit systems was unconstitutional. |
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Definition
| 1976 - Overturning Furman v. Georgia, the case that ruled that Georgia’s rewritten death penalty statute was constitutional. |
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Definition
| 1965 - Supreme Court case that established the Constitution’s implied right to privacy. |
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Definition
| 2003 - The Court voted to uphold the constitutionality of the University of Michigan’s law school policy, which gave preference to minority students. |
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Term
| Harris v. Forklift Systems |
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Definition
| 1993 - The Court ruled that a federal civil rights law created a “broad rule of workplace equality.” |
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Term
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Definition
| 1961 - The Court ruled that an all-male jury did not violate a woman’s rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. |
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Definition
| 1991, 2001 - Continuation of redistricting litigation begun with Shaw v. Reno (1993). The Court reversed district court conclusions that the North Carolina legislature had used race-driven criteria in violation of the equal protection clause to redraw district lines. |
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Term
| Immigration and Naturalization Services v. Chadha |
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Definition
| 1983 - The Court ruled that the legislative veto as it was used in many circumstances was unconstitutional because it violated the separation of powers principle. |
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Term
| Klopfer v. North Carolina |
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Definition
| 1967 - Incorporated the Sixth Amendment’s right to a speedy trial. |
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Term
| Korematsu v. United States |
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Definition
| 1944 - The Court ruled that the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II was not unconstitutional. |
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Term
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Definition
| 2003 - The Court reversed its ruling in Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) by finding a Texas statue that banned sodomy to be unconstitutional. |
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Definition
| 1971 - The Court determined that direct government assistance to religious schools was unconstitutional. In the majority opinion, the Court created what has become known as the “Lemon test” for deciding if a law is in violation of the establishment clause. |
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Term
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Definition
| 1984 - In a defeat for the ACLU, the Court held that a city’s inclusion of a crèche in its annual Christmas display in a private park did not violate the establishment clause. |
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