Original jurisdiction (cases heard for the first time by the Supreme Court...usually only 1 or 2 per year)

Appeal from a federal circuit court (a lower federal court)

Appeal from a state supreme court

All of the above

25 to 35

75 to 85

150 to 200

250 to 300

There's a tournament to decide the most interesting cases like the March Madness FInal Four

4 of the 9 Supreme Court justices must decide they want to hear the case for it to be heard.

The Supreme Court justices make rulings based on whether they think the President has done a good job during a given 4 year term.

If any Supreme Court justices rule in the same manner in 4 consecutive cases, then there is an anti-collusion investigation

A precedent is how similar court cases have been decided in the past.

Precedents are used by judges when they make rulings.

Any ruling made by the Supreme Court establishes a precedent that must be followed by other lower courts.

All are TRUE

Each side in the case is allowed 30 minutes argument.

Up to 24 cases may be argued at one sitting.

Since the majority of cases involve the review of a decision of some other court, there is no jury and no witnesses are heard.

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For each case justices can ask questions.

When the Court is sitting, public sessions begin promptly at 10 a.m. and continue until 3 p.m., with a one-hour lunch recess starting at noon.

During the intervening recess period, the Justices study the argued and forthcoming cases and work on their opinions.

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The majority opinion is an explanation of the reasoning behind the majority decision of a Supreme Court.

The majority opinion is written by a justice selected by either the Chief Justice or the senior justice who voted with the majority.

The majority opinion is never cited as precedent in arguments and decisions during other court cases.

Written by justices who voted with the majority, but want to explain their ruling on the case.

Written by a justice who agrees with the majority vote but for different reasons than listed in the majority opinion.

The word concur means "agree."

A concurring opinion is a written disagreement with the majority's opinion in a Supreme Court case.

A dissenting opinion is an opinion written by a justice who disagrees with the majority opinion.

Judges have taken the opportunity to write dissenting opinions as a means to voice their concerns.

Judges often want to make sure that the reason why they disagreed with the majority opinion of a court case is recorded.

A dissenting opinion is written by a judge that agreed with the majority of the other justices on the Supreme Court

A justice might write a dissenting opinion in order to affect future judgments in cases about situations similar to the case in question.

In 1936, Chief Justice Charles Hughes stated that "A dissent in a Court of last resort is an appeal...to the intelligence of a future day..."

Both Examples are TRUE

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They're the interests of a country overall (as opposed to particular people or groups within the nation).

The Patriot Act made after the 9/11 tragedy gave law enforcement officials the right to wiretap the phones of "suspected terrorists." Many people said this law supported America's national interests.

Some innocent people's rights were violated under the Patriot Act and there were instances of racial profiling. Thus, many people said this law was a violation of America's national interests and undermined the Bill of Rights.

America's national interests are always aligned with the U.S. President's decisions.

Supreme Court justices get terms for life. They leave the position if they retire, die, or are impeached.

Supreme Court justices are given life terms so that they won't base their decisions on what would get them reelected.

Presidents nominate Supreme Court justices when there's an opening on the court and then 1/2 of the Senate needs to confirm the appointment after they have a hearing.

Supreme Court salaries are set at $255,500 per year for the chief justice and at $275,000 per year for the 8 associate justices.

Judicial Review is the power of the Supreme Court to declare that a law made by Congress is unconstitutional.

When Judicial Review was established it gave the Supreme Court a powerful "check" to the power of Congress.

The Marbury v. Madison case established that the Supreme Court would have the power of Judicial Review. In the Constitution "Judicial Review" isn't explicitly stated as a power of the Judicial Branch.

Judicial Review gives Congress the power to declare that a law is unconstitutional.

He served as chief attorney for the plaintiffs in the case Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.

Thirteen years after serving as a lawyer in the Brown v. Board of Education case, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him as the first black Supreme Court justice.

He was sworn in by President Barack Obama.

His mom was a teacher and as a young lawyer he fought for African-American teachers to be paid fairly. As a Supreme Court justice he supported Affirmative Action and opposed corporal punishment.

She was the 1st woman to be a Supreme Court justice.

She graduated 3rd in her Stanford Law School class,

She had trouble finding a job because firms were giving preferential treatment to men.

All of the statements are TRUE.

Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation v. EPA (2004) said the Environmental Protection Agency could step in and take action to reduce air pollution under the Clean Air Act when a state conservation agency fails to act.

Tennessee v. Lane (2004) upheld the constitutionality of the Americans with Disabilities Act and required that courtrooms be physically accessible to the disabled.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation laws for public facilities as long as the segregated facilities were equal in quality – a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal."

Lee v. Weisman (1992) continued the tradition of government neutrality toward religion, finding that government-sponsored prayer is unacceptable at graduations and other public school events.

A children's book called I Dissent was written about Ruth Bader Ginsburg and a movie about her life was called RBG.

Clarence Thomas is currently the only African-American justice on the Supreme Court. He's a Republican who graduated from Holy Cross and Yale Law School.

John Roberts is the Chief Justice. He cast the deciding vote in the Senate's impeachment trial.

Sonia Sotomayor is the first Latina Supreme Court justice in American history. She graduated from Princeton University and her parents are from Puerto Rico.

Students in an Iowa school were suspended for wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam war.

The Supreme Curt ruled that this suspension was unconstitutional, and that public school students do not "shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse door."

The Tinker students were a brother and sister.

The Tinker case established a precedent because students in schools can now wear clothes with any type of political message.

His speech was filled with inappropriate references and innuendos, but it contained no obscenities.

Some of the 600 students who attended the event cheered for Fraser and other students appeared bewildered.

Fraser's parents agreed with the school's disciplinary action.

The Supreme Court decided, by a 7-2 margin, that it was okay for the school to punish the student. They said that a school could prohibit vulgar behavior or speeches as a part of its job of teaching students "the boundaries of socially appropriate behavior."

When they published the articles in the school-sponsored and funded newspaper The Spectrum, a custodian deleted the pages that contained the stories prior to publication without telling the students.

Cathy Kuhlmeier and 2 other students sued because they believed that their 1st Amendment rights (freedom of the press) had been violated.

In a 5-3 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the principal's actions did not violate the students' free speech rights.

The Supreme Court noted that the paper was sponsored by the school and, as such, the school had a legitimate interest in preventing the publication of articles that it deemed inappropriate .

The ruling (5-4) established that the 1st Amendment protects the right to free speech, even if the speaker is a corporation.

The ruling removed limitations on corporate funding of independent political broadcasts.

In his dissenting opinion, Justice Stevens argued that the framers of the Constitution had sought to guarantee the right of free speech to "individual Americans, not corporations."

A Washington Post-ABC News poll taken at the time showed that 90 % of Americans supported the Supreme Court's decision in the case.

In his last few hours in office, President John Adams made a series of "midnight appointments" to fill as many government posts as possible with judges from his party, the Federalists. One of these appointments was William Marbury as a federal judge.

Thomas Jefferson took over as President after John Adams before the appointment was officially given to Marbury. Jefferson was from the opposing political party. He instructed Secretary of State James Madison to not deliver the appointment.

Marbury sued Madison to get the appointment he felt he deserved. He asked the Supreme Court to require Madison to deliver the appointment. He said the Judiciary Act, passed by Congress in 1789, permitted the Supreme Court of the United States to issue such a writ.

The Supreme Court ruled that the Judiciary Act passed in 1789 was unconstitutional so Marbury didn't have to get his appointment.

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Dred Scott was a slave who had lived with his owner in a free state before returning to the slave state of Missouri. Scott argued that time spent in a free state entitled him to emancipation.

the Supreme Court decided that no black, free or slave, could claim U.S. citizenship, and therefore blacks were unable to petition the court for their freedom. The Court ruled that slaves were not citizens but property.

The Dred Scott decision outraged abolitionists and heightened North-South tensions. It is considered a cause of the Civil War.

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The Supreme Court case stemmed from an 1892 incident in which African-American train passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a car for blacks in Louisiana.

Rejecting Plessy's argument that his 14th Amendment constitutional rights were violated, the Supreme Court ruled that racially segregated public facilities were legal, so long as the facilities for blacks and whites were equal.

The case was sparked by Rosa Parks' refusal to move to the back of a bus in 1955 in Montgomery, AL. Then, MLK, Jr. led a boycott, which helped start the Civil Rights Movement.

Florida became the first state to mandate segregated railroad cars in 1887, followed in quick succession by Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana and other states by the end of the century.

Oliver Brown filed a lawsuit in 1951, after his daughter, Linda Brown, was denied entrance to Topeka's all-white elementary schools.

Brown claimed that schools for black children were not equal to the white schools, and that segregation violated the so-called "equal protection clause" of the 14th Amendment, which holds that no state can "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

The Supreme Court justices ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional. With their ruling the Supreme Court overruled Plessy v. Ferguson by declaring that racially segregated facilities are inherently unequal and ordered all public schools desegregated.

It led to the Great Migration during WWI and the Harlem Renaissance.

When they first came to her door, Mapp did not allow the police to enter stating that they did not have a warrant. A few hours later, the police returned and forced their way into the house without a search warrant.

The ruling determined that evidence illegally gathered by the police may not be used in a criminal trial. In other words, if the police enter your home and don't have a search warrant administered by a judge, then what they find in the person's house can't be used to convict them of a crime.

This ruling strengthened people's 8th Amendment right against cruel or unusual punishments.

The ruling strengthened the 4th Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures by making it illegal for evidence obtained by law enforcement without a valid warrant.

The police can only get a search warrant to enter your home if a judge has determined there is probable cause to search a particular place where incriminating evidence may be located.

For the judge to approve the search warrant the requesting police officer must state under oath his or her belief that specific evidence of a crime will be located in a specific place.

Probable cause may be established, for example, based on information passed on by a concerned citizen or a confidential informant. It may contain information the police learned during an undercover "sting" operations.

All are TRUE.

The 9-0 ruling struck down state laws banning interracial marriage in the United States.

The Lovings got help from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which argued that laws against interracial marriage were unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment.

Following a November 7th, 2000 ballot referendum, Maine became the last state to officially legalize interracial marriage.

As recently as 1967 interracial marriages were illegal in more than a dozen states.

It was a major turning point in the legal recognition of gay rights.

The ruling established that prejudice on the basis of sexual orientation was not acceptable under the Constitution because it was similar to discrimination on the basis of race or religion.

The ruling legalized discrimination against people.

It established that same gender couples have a constitutional right to marry.

It established that a marriage between two people of the same gender was legal in every U.S. state even when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-State.

It outlawed marriages between people of the same gender.

It established that the 14th Amendment requires a state to license a marriage between two people of the same gender

The ruling prohibited state-sponsored recitation of prayer in public schools by virtue of the 1st Amendment's Freedom of Religion and the 14th Amendment's due process clause.

The New York law allowed students to absent themselves from this activity if they found it objectionable.

The ruling prohibited prayers from taking place at private schools (e.g., Catholic and Jewish private schools that are funded by tuition and not public taxes).

The Supreme Court ruled that internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII did not violate 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause because national security is a good enough reason to justify the racial discrimination.

The Supreme Court upheld (6-3) the conviction of Fred Korematsu for having violated the order to relocate during World War II.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1944 that relocation of Japanese Americans violated their rights. It sided with Korematsu.

In 1988 the U.S. Senate today voted to give $20,000 and an apology to each of the Japanese-Americans who were driven from their homes and sent to internment camps in World War II.

President Trump's travel ban targeted seven nations, five of which have populations in which the majority of the people are Muslim.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned in her dissent that upholding the ban would echo the Court's 1944 decision supporting Japanese internment in Korematsu v. United States.

Chief Justice John Roberts said the Korematsu verdict was a mistake by the Supreme Court in 1944, but he added that Trump's travel ban was not like that situation.

The Supreme Court ruled (in a 9-0 verdict) that the travel ban was illegal.

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This ruling was never overturned so public school students still must recite the Pledge of Allegiance every day.

This ruling was later overturned and now students can elect to not recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

The Supreme Court overruled the decision in the Minersville case, which said students had to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

Before this ruling the West Virginia Board of Education required all pupils and teachers to salute the flag each day.

An education bill signed into law by the governor of Florida in 2018 includes a mandate that all public schools in Florida must display "In God we Trust" in their buildings. This became the state's motto in 2006.

The phrase "In God we trust" is used on U.S. coins and bills because everyone agrees that it does not violate people's 1st Amendment rights (freedom of religion).

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FALSE

The federal judges agreed that climate change is an urgent, threatening problem, but they ruled that the 21 plaintiffs, who were between the ages of 8 and 19 when the suit was filed, couldn't sue the federal government.

A group of four Native American tribes in Louisiana filed a human rights claim at the United Nations. They argued that the U.S. government's contributions to climate change has violated their rights because their lands are being eroded by rising seas.

Now that the 21 young people lost their case there won't be any more lawsuits against the U.S. government involving Global Warming.

A group of young adults filed a lawsuit stating that the Canadian government has violated their constitutional rights by promoting and enabling fossil-fuel development despite the risks from global warming.

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FALSE

TRUE

FALSE

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FALSE