Supreme Court and Landmark Cases

Supreme Court and Landmark Cases

by Mr. Weitzner

Who is the Judicial Branch?

• Composed of the Supreme Court, a nine member court who serve life terms , and all of the lower (inferior) courts

• The Supreme Court is the highest court in the land or the court of last appeal. Their rulings are final.

• The Judicial Branch is organized in Article III of the Constitution.

Multiple Choice

How many Supreme Court justices are there?

• Five

• Twelve

• Nine

• Three

Who hears what?

• The Supreme Court interprets or evaluates the law

• Appeals courts listen to cases decided by lower courts

• Lower courts handle criminal handle civil and criminal cases

Multiple Choice

How many federal district courts are there?

• 94

• 100

• 435

• 52

What cases does the Supreme Court hear?

• The Supreme Court has the power of judicial review, meaning they can rule laws unconstitutional.

• Their decisions on cases are often referred to as precedent. Later courts try and follow these.

• Cases on the Supreme Court are named like this: Miranda v. Arizona, United States V. Nixon, and Brown V. the Board of Education

Multiple Choice

Most cases that make it to the Supreme Court come from where?

• Lower federal courts

• Congress

• Local courts

• really difficult cases

Some Landmark Supreme Court Cases

And their lasting impact on the United States

Marbury V Madison (1803)

In 1800, President John Adams ran to be re-elected as president, but he lost to Thomas Jefferson. During his last weeks in office, Adams appointed a bunch of men to be justices of the peace in the District of Columbia. Each man would receive a paper commission that was signed and sealed. The commissions were prepared, but they were not sent before Adams left office. When President Jefferson took over, he refused to send them. One man, William Marbury, was upset. He wanted to be a judge! So he sued, and asked the United States Supreme Court to issue a legal order called a writ of mandamus (man-DAY-mus), which would REQUIRE Marbury to become a judge.

The Argument

FIRST: Did you notice that Marbury didn’t start in a regular, local court? He started at the Supreme Court. Normally, that would be backwards. But in 1789, Congress had passed a law saying people could start at the Supreme Court if all they wanted was a writ of mandamus.

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Marbury argued that he was entitled to the writ because his commission had already been created. He also argued that the Supreme Court had the power to issue the writ.

Poll

Does the Supreme Court have the power to hear more types of cases than just the ones the Constitution says it does?

• Yes

• No

The Decision : NO

Marbury lost! The Supreme Court agreed that Marbury had a right to receive his commission, but disagreed that the Court had the power to issue the writ. Why? Because the Supreme Court gets its power directly from the Constitution, and the Constitution says only certain kinds of cases can start at the Supreme Court. That meant the 1789 law passed by Congress was unconstitutional. Congress did not have the power to allow more kinds of cases to start at the Supreme Court. Therefore, the Supreme Court said it could not help Marbury get his commission. 

​The law was null and void by Article III of the Constitution which outlines the abilities of the Supreme Court.

Impact ("So What?")

Believe it or not, this is considered one of the most important cases the Supreme Court has ever decided. That’s because it was the first time the Supreme Court struck down an act of Congress for being unconstitutional. The idea that the Supreme Court has the final say about what is constitutional is called judicial review. Judicial review lets the judicial branch do two things: 1) interpret the Constitution and decide what it means, and 2) stop the executive and legislative branches from doing things that go against the Constitution. The decision in Marbury v. Madison helped cement the judicial branch as equal with the other two branches of government by giving it equal power. 

Plessy V Fergusson (1896)

You may have heard the saying, “Some rules are meant to be broken.” In 1890, a man named Homer Plessy broke the rules. The state of Louisiana had passed the Separate Car Act, which required railway companies to have “separate but equal” train cars for black people and white people. A person who sat in the wrong car had to pay a $25 fine or go to jail for 20 days.

You can probably guess that the cars for blacks weren’t as nice as the cars for whites. Not only that, it seemed unfair to make black people sit separately. A group of citizens called the “Free People of Color in New Orleans” formed a committee dedicated to repealing this law. They convinced Homer Plessy, who was 7/8 white and 1/8 black, to test the law by sitting in a whites-only train car. When Plessy was asked to move, he refused and was arrested.

THE ARGUMENT

Plessy argued that Louisiana’s Separate Car Act violated the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It says that states may not “deny to any person within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” He argued that requiring black people to sit separately from white people implied that blacks were inferior to whites, and therefore unequal.

Poll

Is it Constitutional to make black people sit in a separate train car from white people?

• Yes

• No

The Decision : YES

The Supreme Court disagreed. It saw separate train cars as an issue of social equality, not political or legal equality. It said separating the races did not take away civil or political rights. Justice Brown wrote for the Court, saying that “if one race be inferior to the other socially, the constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane.” Justice Brown said there had been separate schools for black and white students for a very long time, and many court cases had decided that states were allowed to have these segregated schools.

Out of the nine justices, Justice Harlan was the only one to dissent, or disagree. He wrote that “our constitution is color-blind” and does not tolerate “classes among citizens.” He said the Court’s decision would lead to racial hatred and increased attacks against black peoples’ rights.

The Impact ("So What?")

The Court’s decision set the stage for many more years of discrimination against people of color. Plessy’s case gave rise to a new doctrine: “separate but equal.” States were free to pass laws that kept races separate, and although the facilities were supposed to be equal, they rarely were. The “separate but equal” doctrine would not be abolished until the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Texas V. Johnson (1989)

The presidential election of 1984 had something in common with all other presidential elections: People disagreed about who the next president should be. Ronald Reagan was finishing up four years as president and was running for re-election. He was a popular president, but there were many who disagreed with his ideas. One of these people was Gregory Johnson. In Dallas, Texas in the summer of 1984, Johnson joined a group of protestors outside the Republican National Convention, where Reagan was set to be nominated as the Republican presidential candidate. Standing in front of the Dallas City Hall, Johnson poured kerosene on an American flag and set it on fire. He was then arrested under a Texas law that prohibited “desecration of a venerated object.” At trial, Johnson was sentenced to a year in prison and fined $2,000

The Argument

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution forbids laws that would limit citizens’ freedom of speech. Johnson argued that the Texas law did exactly that: Burning a flag, he argued, was a form of speech that should be protected by the First Amendment.

Poll

Does the first amendment's free speech clause protect flag burning?

• Yes

• No

The Decision

The Supreme Court agreed. Many times before, the Court had already said that speech is not limited to words. Conduct can also be “speech” if it is intended to send a message. The fact that Johnson’s conduct involved an American flag only made it more obvious that he was trying to send a message: “Johnson was not… prosecuted for the expression of just any idea; he was prosecuted for his expression of dissatisfaction with the policies of this country,” and that kind of expression is “at the core of our First Amendment values.” The Court made it clear that even though some people were seriously offended by the flag burning “speech,” that didn’t make it okay to limit the speech. Instead, the Court said that “a principal function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute.” Ultimately, the Court said, “Johnson’s political expression was restricted because of the content of the message he conveyed.” That is exactly what the First Amendment forbids.

The Impact

Most people aren’t going to go out and burn a flag. But at some point, most of us will have ideas and opinions that some people will find offensive. Does the government have the right to decide what opinions are too offensive to express? The answer is no. This case reinforced citizens’ right to express ideas even if those ideas are extremely upsetting to some people. The Constitution guarantees people the freedom to hold and express whatever views they wish, about our government or the flag or anything else

Miranda V Arizona (1966)

Ernesto Miranda was arrested for a violent crime in Phoenix, Arizona and was taken to a police station for questioning. Officers put him into an interrogation room, where they questioned him for two hours. They came out with a written confession Miranda had signed. The confession form included a typed paragraph saying the confession had been made voluntarily. The typed paragraph said Miranda had signed the confession “with full knowledge of my legal rights, understanding any statement I make may be used against me.” Miranda’s confession was used against him in court, and he was convicted of a serious crime. 

The Argument

The 5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says that a person involved in a criminal case cannot be forced to be a witness against himself. In other words, only statements that are made voluntarily may be used. Miranda argued that his confession was not voluntary because he had not been told about his right to remain silent. He was also not told about his right to a lawyer under the 6th Amendment, so a lawyer was not present during the questioning. For these reasons, Miranda argued that his confession should not have been used in court.

Poll

Do the police have to make you aware of your 5th and 6th amendment rights in order to use your confession at trial?

• Yes

• No

The Decision

The Supreme Court agreed. It said that the 5th Amendment right to remain silent is so basic that it doesn’t even matter if a person already knows about this right—the right is not safeguarded unless officers tell people about it before interrogation begins. The Court said this is especially true because the interrogation techniques used by law enforcement officers can be very intimidating. The Court also said police must inform suspects of the right to have a lawyer present during the questioning. Technically, the right to a lawyer is a 6th Amendment right. But the Court said that a lawyer is absolutely necessary to protect a suspect’s 5th Amendment right not to testify against himself or herself. That’s because a lawyer can advise a suspect about what to say and what not to say during the questioning. Because Miranda’s 5th Amendment right was violated, the Court reversed his conviction

The Impact

The famous “Miranda warning” you hear on detective shows (and that officers recite in real life) came from this case. Now, if officers question you without reading your rights first, nothing you say during the questioning can be used against you in court. (Failing to read your rights does not mean your case will be automatically dismissed.) As for Miranda, he was put on trial a second time and convicted even without his confession.