Great Court Cases

Marbury v. Madison · 1803

May the Supreme Court issue a writ of mandamus ordering the Secretary of State to deliver a judicial commission, and must it enforce an act of Congress that enlarges its jurisdiction beyond what the Constitution allows?

• Applicant side (William Marbury): The appointment was complete once the President signed the commission and the seal was affixed; delivery was a ministerial duty, and Section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 authorized the Court to compel it by mandamus.
• Respondent side (James Madison): Madison did not appear; the Jefferson administration held that an undelivered commission conferred no right and that the courts could not direct the President's chief officers.

Holding: Unanimous (4–0): Marbury had a right to his commission and a legal remedy, but Section 13, as the Court read it, unconstitutionally enlarged the Court's original jurisdiction, so the Court could not issue the writ.

McCulloch v. Maryland · 1819

Does Congress have power to charter a national bank, and may a state tax that bank's operations?

• Plaintiff in error side (James W. McCulloch): National authority comes from the people, necessary means useful or conducive to a granted power, the bank was a long-accepted instrument of federal finance, and a state tax could cripple it.
• Defendant in error side (State of Maryland): The Constitution is a compact of sovereign states whose delegated powers must be read strictly, necessary means indispensable, and the taxing power was retained by the states, limited only by express prohibitions.

Holding: Unanimous (7–0): Congress may charter the bank as an appropriate means to its enumerated powers under the Necessary and Proper Clause, and Maryland's tax on the bank's operations is unconstitutional because the power to tax involves the power to destroy.

Worcester v. Georgia · 1832

May Georgia enforce its criminal laws within the Cherokee Nation, whose lands and self-government were guaranteed by federal treaties and statutes?

• Plaintiff in error side (Samuel A. Worcester): The Constitution commits relations with Indian nations to the national government, the treaties of Hopewell and Holston and federal intercourse acts protect Cherokee land and government, and a Georgia law contradicting them cannot support a conviction.
• Defendant in error side (State of Georgia): Georgia did not appear; through its officials it held that its sovereignty covered all territory within its boundaries, that the United States had promised in 1802 to extinguish Indian title there, and that the Court could not review its criminal judgments.

Holding: 5–1 (Justice Baldwin dissenting): the Cherokee Nation is a distinct political community in which Georgia's laws have no force, so the statute was void and Worcester's conviction was reversed; Georgia did not comply, and the Cherokee were removed westward in 1838–1839.

Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer · 1952

Did the President have constitutional or statutory authority to seize and operate the nation's steel mills to avert a strike during the Korean War?

• Petitioner side (Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. and other steel companies): No statute authorized the seizure, Congress had rejected seizure as a remedy in the Taft-Hartley Act, and the Constitution gives the President no power to make law by taking private property.
• Respondent side (Charles Sawyer, Secretary of Commerce, for the United States): Steel was indispensable to troops in Korea and to defense programs Congress had enacted, and the President's combined powers as Chief Executive and Commander in Chief allowed him to act in a grave emergency.

Holding: 6–3 (Black; Vinson, Reed and Minton dissenting): the seizure was unconstitutional because lawmaking belongs to Congress and no statute authorized it.

United States v. Nixon · 1974

Must a sitting President obey a subpoena for recorded White House conversations needed as evidence in a federal criminal trial, despite his claim of executive privilege?

• Petitioner side (United States, through Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski): Binding regulations gave the Special Prosecutor independent authority, a fair criminal trial needs all relevant evidence, and the courts, not the President, decide what the law requires.
• Respondent side (President Richard M. Nixon): A dispute between the President and a subordinate is internal to the executive branch. The separation of powers and the need for candid advice make his judgment on executive privilege absolute and final.

Holding: Unanimous (8–0, Rehnquist not participating): executive privilege is presumptive but not absolute, and a generalized claim of confidentiality must yield to the demonstrated need for evidence in a criminal trial; Nixon resigned 16 days later.

Fletcher v. Peck · 1810

Could the Georgia legislature annul the 1795 Yazoo land grants, said to have been obtained by bribery, and so void titles later bought by purchasers who knew nothing of the fraud?

• Plaintiff in error side (Robert Fletcher): A grant procured by corrupting the legislature was void, one legislature may repeal what an earlier one enacted, and Georgia lacked full title because the lands were reserved to the Indian nations.
• Defendant in error side (John Peck): Courts may not inquire into a sovereign legislature's motives in a private suit, innocent buyers who paid value must be protected, and the rescinding act impaired the obligation of contracts.

Holding: Unanimous in judgment, with Justice Johnson concurring separately: a land grant is an executed contract, and Georgia was barred, by general principles of free government and by the Contract Clause, from divesting the vested titles of innocent purchasers.

Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward · 1819

Is a private college's royal charter a contract protected by the Contract Clause from alteration by the state legislature?

• Plaintiff in error side (Trustees of Dartmouth College): The charter was a contract under which private donors gave property, the college was a private charity rather than an arm of government, and the 1816 acts took its governance from the persons the founder had chosen.
• Defendant in error side (William H. Woodward): The college was a public corporation serving education, its trustees held no private interest, New Hampshire had succeeded to the Crown's authority over it, and the Contract Clause covered private agreements about property, not charters of public trust.

Holding: 5–1 (Justice Duvall dissenting without opinion): the charter is a contract creating a private eleemosynary corporation, and New Hampshire's acts placing the college under state control impaired it in violation of the Constitution.

Gibbons v. Ogden · 1824

May New York enforce its steamboat monopoly against a vessel licensed under federal coasting law, and how far does Congress's power to regulate commerce among the states extend?

• Appellant side (Thomas Gibbons): Commerce includes navigation, Congress's power over commerce among the states is complete and exclusive, and in any case the federal coasting license entitled his boats to navigate New York waters.
• Appellee side (Aaron Ogden): The states kept every power not surrendered, commerce means buying and selling goods rather than navigation, states had always regulated their own waters, and New York's grant was a valid exercise of concurrent power.

Holding: Unanimous (6–0): commerce includes navigation and reaches all commerce concerning more states than one, and New York's monopoly law conflicted with the federal licensing act and had to yield under the Supremacy Clause.

Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge · 1837

Did the 1785 Massachusetts charter for the Charles River Bridge carry an implied promise not to authorize a competing bridge, so that the 1828 Warren Bridge charter impaired a contract under Article I, Section 10?

• Plaintiff in error side (Proprietors of the Charles River Bridge): A grant carries with it whatever is necessary to enjoy it, and the toll right was the whole point of the bargain. Under Dartmouth College a state may not destroy a charter's value by licensing a free rival next door.
• Defendant in error side (Proprietors of the Warren Bridge): A public grant conveys only what its words clearly express, and a legislature is never presumed to have given up its power to provide new roads and bridges for the community.

Holding: 4–3: public grants are read strictly in favor of the public, the charter gave no exclusive right, and the dismissal of the bill is affirmed; Story, joined by Thompson, dissented.

Lochner v. New York · 1905

Does a New York law limiting bakery employees to sixty hours a week and ten hours a day deprive employers and employees of liberty of contract without due process of law?

• Plaintiff in error side (Joseph Lochner): The right to buy and sell labor is part of the liberty the Fourteenth Amendment protects, baking is an ordinary trade, and the hours limit serves organized labor rather than public health.
• Defendant in error side (State of New York): The legislature found long hours in hot, dusty bakeshops injurious to workers, the police power plainly extends to health, and courts should defer to that judgment.

Holding: 5–4: the hours limit is an unreasonable and arbitrary interference with liberty of contract, not a valid health or labor law; Justices Harlan (joined by White and Day) and Holmes dissented.

Wickard v. Filburn · 1942

May Congress, under the Commerce Clause, penalize a farmer for wheat grown beyond his quota when that wheat is consumed on his own farm?

• Appellant side (Claude R. Wickard, Secretary of Agriculture): The Agricultural Adjustment Act regulates marketing, and in any case controlling home-grown wheat is necessary and proper, because wheat kept at home would defeat national control of supply and price.
• Appellee side (Roscoe C. Filburn): Growing wheat and consuming it at home are local production and consumption, whose effects on interstate commerce are at most indirect and so beyond the power of Congress.

Holding: Unanimous (8–0) (Jackson): Congress may regulate local activity that, taken together with that of others similarly situated, has a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce.

Barron v. Baltimore · 1833

Does the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of just compensation for property taken for public use restrain the states and their cities, or only the federal government?

• Plaintiff in error side (John Barron): The amendment was written in favor of the liberty of the citizen and names no particular government, and parts of the original Constitution already bind the states, so it should protect citizens against state and city takings too.
• Defendant in error side (Mayor and City Council of Baltimore): The Bill of Rights was adopted to limit the new national government, and each state's own constitution governs the relation between that state and its people.

Holding: Unanimous (7–0): the takings clause limits only the United States, so the Court has no jurisdiction and the writ of error is dismissed.

Slaughter-House Cases · 1873

Did Louisiana's grant of a 25-year slaughtering monopoly in and around New Orleans violate the Thirteenth Amendment or the Privileges or Immunities, Due Process or Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment?

• Plaintiffs in error side (Butchers' Benevolent Association of New Orleans): The monopoly reduced independent butchers to a form of servitude, took their livelihood without due process, and abridged a right every citizen holds to pursue a lawful calling.
• Defendants in error side (Crescent City Live-Stock Landing and Slaughter-House Company and Louisiana): The act was an ordinary use of the state's police power to protect public health by moving a noxious trade below the city, and butchers remained free to work at the company's facility.

Holding: 5–4: the law was upheld. The Privileges or Immunities Clause protects only rights of national citizenship, and the act neither deprived the butchers of property nor discriminated against a class. Field, Bradley, Swayne and Chase dissented.

United States v. Wong Kim Ark · 1898

Does a child born in the United States to Chinese parents who are permanently domiciled here, and not in diplomatic service, become a citizen at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment?

• Appellant side (United States): Citizenship follows the parents, as in the Roman law and the law of nations, and 'subject to the jurisdiction thereof' requires full political allegiance, which children of subjects barred from naturalization cannot owe.
• Appellee side (Wong Kim Ark): The common law inherited by the states made birth within the territory the test of nationality, and the Fourteenth Amendment's plain words confirm that rule.

Holding: 6–2 (Justice McKenna not participating): the Fourteenth Amendment affirms citizenship by birth within the territory, including children of domiciled aliens, subject only to narrow traditional exceptions.

Korematsu v. United States · 1944

Could Congress and the military, under wartime authority, make it a crime for an American citizen of Japanese ancestry to remain in his home area after an exclusion order?

• Petitioner side (Fred Korematsu): He was punished solely for his ancestry, with no inquiry into his loyalty, and conflicting orders forbidding him either to leave or to stay left him no lawful choice but to submit to detention.
• Respondent side (United States): Facing possible invasion and unable to separate the loyal from the disloyal in time, military authorities acting under congressional authorization reasonably judged exclusion necessary to prevent espionage and sabotage.

Holding: 6–3 (Black; Roberts, Murphy and Jackson dissenting): the exclusion order was upheld as justified by military necessity, though restrictions on a single racial group were declared subject to the most rigid scrutiny.

Roe v. Wade · 1973

Does the Constitution protect a woman's decision to end a pregnancy against a State's criminal prohibition, and if so, how far may a State regulate?

• Appellant side (Jane Roe): The liberty and privacy the Court had recognized in decisions about marriage, family and contraception extend to this decision, so a near-total criminal ban violates the Fourteenth Amendment.
• Appellee side (Henry Wade, for Texas): The State has a compelling interest in protecting life from conception, the unborn are persons under the Fourteenth Amendment, and the people's elected legislature should weigh the competing interests.

Holding: 7–2: The right of privacy grounded in Fourteenth Amendment liberty includes the decision, subject to state interests that grow as pregnancy advances; White and Rehnquist dissented that the Constitution's text and history give no support for the ruling.

Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey · 1992

Should Roe v. Wade be reaffirmed, modified or overruled, and may Pennsylvania enforce its requirements of informed consent, a waiting period, parental consent, spousal notice and reporting?

• Petitioner side (Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania): Roe should be reaffirmed in full and every provision of the Act subjected to strict scrutiny, because two decades of precedent and reliance protect the right.
• Respondent side (Robert P. Casey, Governor of Pennsylvania): Roe was wrongly decided and should be overruled, and the Act should be upheld as a rational means of protecting maternal health, informed choice and unborn life.

Holding: 5–4 on reaffirming Roe's essential holding: The joint opinion kept that holding under stare decisis, replaced the trimester framework with an undue-burden standard, upheld most provisions and struck down spousal notification; four Justices would have overruled Roe and upheld the whole Act.

District of Columbia v. Heller · 2008

Do the District of Columbia's ban on registering handguns and its rule that firearms at home be kept disabled violate the Second Amendment?

• Petitioner side (District of Columbia): The Amendment protects keeping and bearing arms in connection with militia service, as United States v. Miller (1939) had long been read. In any case, a dense city may reasonably restrict handguns for public safety.
• Respondent side (Dick Heller): The Amendment secures an individual right rooted in the English Bill of Rights and the common law of self-defense, and a ban on the most common weapon kept for home defense cannot stand.

Holding: 5–4: the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms, and the District's handgun ban and trigger-lock requirement violate it (Stevens and Breyer dissenting, each joined by the other dissenters).

Obergefell v. Hodges · 2015

Does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex and to recognize such a marriage lawfully performed in another state?

• Petitioner side (James Obergefell and other same-sex couples): Marriage is a fundamental liberty, and the reasons the Court has given for protecting it apply equally to them. Denying them its legal status violates both the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses.
• Respondent side (Richard Hodges and officials of Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee): The Constitution does not define marriage. The man-woman definition is ancient, rational and tied to the rearing of children, and so basic a question should be settled by the people of each state through democratic deliberation.

Holding: 5–4: the Fourteenth Amendment requires states to license same-sex marriages and to recognize those performed elsewhere (Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito each dissenting).

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization · 2022

Are all state prohibitions on abortion before viability unconstitutional, and does the Constitution confer a right to abortion at all?

• Petitioner side (Thomas E. Dobbs, for Mississippi): Roe and Casey were wrongly decided and should be overruled so that each State may regulate abortion as its citizens choose; the fifteen-week law satisfies rational-basis review.
• Respondent side (Jackson Women's Health Organization): Upholding the law would amount to overruling Roe and Casey, and half a century of precedent and reliance requires the Court to reaffirm both decisions.

Holding: 6–3 to uphold the Mississippi law and 5–4 to overrule Roe and Casey: The Constitution makes no reference to abortion and the right is not deeply rooted in the nation's history and tradition, so the question returns to the people's elected representatives; Roberts concurred only in the judgment, and Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan dissented jointly.

Dred Scott v. Sandford · 1857

Could a person of African descent whose ancestors were brought to America as slaves be a citizen entitled to sue in federal court, and could Congress prohibit slavery in a federal territory?

• Plaintiff in error side (Dred Scott): Free Black men were citizens of several states, and voted there, when the Constitution was adopted. Congress had governed the territories and barred slavery in them since the Northwest Ordinance, so residence on free soil made Scott free.
• Defendant in error side (John F. A. Sanford): The people who formed the Constitution did not include persons of that descent, so they could not be citizens of the United States. Federal territory is held for all the states alike, so a settler cannot lose his property by entering it.

Holding: 7–2: persons of the class described in the plea were held not to be citizens of the United States, and the Missouri Compromise prohibition was held void; the case was remanded for dismissal for want of jurisdiction. McLean and Curtis dissented. The Thirteenth (1865) and Fourteenth (1868) Amendments later superseded these holdings.

Plessy v. Ferguson · 1896

May a state require railroads to carry white and colored passengers in separate but equal coaches, and punish passengers who sit in the wrong coach, consistent with the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments?

• Plaintiff in error side (Homer A. Plessy): The Separate Car Act imposes a badge of servitude, denies equal protection and the privileges or immunities of citizenship, and lets a conductor assign a passenger's race on sight, taking away the reputation of being white.
• Defendant in error side (John H. Ferguson, for Louisiana): The law applies the same rule to both races, requires equal coaches, and is a reasonable use of the police power to keep order in public transport.

Holding: 7–1 (Justice Brewer not participating): the statute is a reasonable regulation that does not violate the Thirteenth or Fourteenth Amendment; Justice Harlan dissented, declaring the Constitution color-blind.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka · 1954

Does state-enforced segregation of public school children by race deny minority children the equal protection of the laws, even when facilities and other tangible factors are equal?

• Appellant side (Oliver Brown et al.): Separation by law marks black children as inferior and damages their education whatever the facilities, and the Fourteenth Amendment was meant to remove legal distinctions based on race.
• Appellee side (Board of Education of Topeka and the other state school authorities): Plessy v. Ferguson and decades of precedent permit separate schools, the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment did not understand it to forbid them, education is reserved to the states, and facilities were being equalized.

Holding: Unanimous (9–0) (Warren): in public education the doctrine of separate but equal has no place, because separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.

Reynolds v. United States · 1879

Does the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause exempt from a federal bigamy law in a territory a man who took a second wife because his church taught it was a religious duty?

• Plaintiff in error side (George Reynolds): Free exercise means little unless it covers what conscience commands. Reynolds acted from sincere obedience to what he believed was divine revelation, so he lacked criminal intent.
• Defendant in error side (United States): The First Amendment secures belief, opinion and worship, but outward acts remain subject to general laws that protect the social order.

Holding: Unanimous (9–0) on the free-exercise question: Congress may punish actions but not opinions, so the conviction is affirmed. Justice Field differed only on admitting Amelia Jane Schofield's earlier testimony.

Schenck v. United States · 1919

Does the First Amendment protect mailing leaflets to draftees during wartime that denounce conscription and urge them to assert their rights, against conviction under the Espionage Act?

• Plaintiff in error side (Charles T. Schenck): The leaflet urged only lawful means such as petitions for repeal, citizens may criticize a law and seek its repeal, and the evidence was improperly seized.
• Defendant in error side (United States): The leaflets were sent to drafted men for no purpose but to discourage service, and in wartime Congress may punish words meant to obstruct the raising of armies.

Holding: Unanimous (9–0): words used in circumstances creating a clear and present danger of evils Congress may prevent are punishable, and a conspiracy to obstruct the draft is a crime even if it fails.

Gitlow v. New York · 1925

Does New York's criminal anarchy law, as applied to the publication of a manifesto urging revolutionary mass action, deprive the publisher of liberty without due process under the Fourteenth Amendment?

• Plaintiff in error side (Benjamin Gitlow): The liberty protected against the states includes freedom of speech and press, and the law punished the mere expression of doctrine without any showing of a clear and present danger.
• Defendant in error side (State of New York): The Manifesto was a call to action, not abstract theory, and a state may forbid advocacy of its violent overthrow before that advocacy bears fruit.

Holding: 7–2: assuming freedom of speech and press are protected against the states, the statute is a reasonable exercise of the police power and the conviction stands; Justice Holmes, joined by Justice Brandeis, dissented.

Near v. Minnesota · 1931

May a state, under a public-nuisance law, enjoin a newspaper found to be malicious, scandalous and defamatory from publishing future issues, consistent with the liberty of the press protected by the Fourteenth Amendment?

• Appellant side (Jay M. Near): Suppressing a newspaper in advance is the censorship the press guarantee forbids, whatever remedies may exist afterward for libel.
• Appellee side (State of Minnesota): The law reaches only a business proved after trial to be malicious and defamatory, libel suits are inadequate against it, and protecting public peace and morals lies within the police power.

Holding: 5–4: the statute imposes an unconstitutional prior restraint, the essence of censorship, and abuses must be remedied by subsequent punishment; Justice Butler, joined by Van Devanter, McReynolds and Sutherland, dissented.

Minersville School District v. Gobitis · 1940

May a public school district expel children who, for religious reasons, refuse to salute the flag and recite the pledge of allegiance?

• Petitioner side (Minersville School District): A patriotic exercise required of every pupil and aimed at no sect is an ordinary means of building national unity, and choosing how to teach loyalty belongs to school boards and legislatures, not courts.
• Respondent side (Walter Gobitis, for his children Lillian and William): The First and Fourteenth Amendments forbid officials to make children profess what their faith prohibits, least of all by taking away their public education.

Holding: 8–1 (Frankfurter; Stone dissenting): the compulsory flag salute was upheld as a general law within the state's power to promote national cohesion.

West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette · 1943

May a state require public school pupils to salute the flag and recite the pledge of allegiance, on pain of expulsion and the prosecution of their parents?

• Appellant side (West Virginia State Board of Education): Under Gobitis, a uniform patriotic ceremony neutral among faiths serves the vital end of national unity, and the means of teaching loyalty are for legislators and educators.
• Appellee side (Walter Barnette and other Jehovah's Witness parents): The state may not force children to make a declaration their faith forbids, nor punish their families for the children's silence.

Holding: 6–3 (Jackson; Roberts, Reed and Frankfurter dissenting): compelling the flag salute violates the First Amendment, and Gobitis is overruled.

Engel v. Vitale · 1962

Does a state violate the Establishment Clause by having public school classes recite daily a nondenominational prayer composed by state officials, even when participation is voluntary?

• Petitioner side (Steven Engel and other New Hyde Park parents): However brief and general, a prayer written by the State Board of Regents and recited in state schools is an official religious exercise that the First Amendment forbids government to prescribe.
• Respondent side (William J. Vitale Jr. and the school board): No child is compelled to join, the prayer favours no denomination, and it continues the nation's long tradition of acknowledging God in public life.

Holding: 6–1: Government may not compose official prayers for public school recitation, and voluntariness and neutrality do not save the practice under the Establishment Clause.

New York Times Co. v. Sullivan · 1964

Does the First Amendment limit a state's power to award libel damages to a public official for criticism of his official conduct that contains factual errors?

• Petitioner side (The New York Times Company and four Alabama ministers): Alabama's rules, which presumed falsity and damage and let a jury tie criticism of a police force to its commissioner, would make criticizing public officials ruinously expensive.
• Respondent side (L. B. Sullivan, Montgomery commissioner): False and defamatory statements have never been constitutionally protected, libel is a matter of state law in a private civil suit, and the paid advertisement was commercial speech.

Holding: Unanimous (9–0): A public official may recover for a defamatory falsehood about his official conduct only by proving actual malice, meaning knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth.

Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District · 1969

Does the First Amendment protect public school students who wear black armbands to school in silent protest of the Vietnam War, against a ban adopted in advance by school officials?

• Petitioner side (John F. Tinker, Mary Beth Tinker and Christopher Eckhardt): The armbands were a silent, peaceful expression of opinion, and the schools singled out one viewpoint while allowing political buttons and other symbols.
• Respondent side (Des Moines Independent Community School District): Officials must be able to keep order in classrooms, the war was an emotional subject likely to provoke disputes, and courts should defer to the judgment of local educators.

Holding: 7–2: Students do not shed their free-speech rights at the schoolhouse gate, and schools may forbid expression only on a showing of material and substantial disruption or interference with the rights of others.

Wisconsin v. Yoder · 1972

May Wisconsin enforce its compulsory school-attendance law against Amish parents who, for religious reasons, keep their children out of school after the eighth grade?

• Petitioner side (State of Wisconsin): Universal schooling to age sixteen prepares every child for citizenship and self-support. Conduct, unlike belief, may be regulated, and the State as parens patriae must protect each child's own chance at a secondary education.
• Respondent side (Jonas Yoder, Wallace Miller and Adin Yutzy): Their faith requires separation from worldly values, and high school would draw adolescents away from the church just as they learn the skills of Amish life. Their own vocational training already produces self-reliant, law-abiding citizens.

Holding: 7–0 as to Jonas Yoder and 6–1 as to Miller and Yutzy (Douglas dissenting in part; Powell and Rehnquist not participating): the Free Exercise Clause bars Wisconsin from compelling Amish children to attend formal high school to age sixteen.

Ex parte Milligan · 1866

May a military commission try a civilian in a state where the civil courts are open and functioning, and must such a prisoner be released on habeas corpus?

• Petitioner side (Lambdin P. Milligan): The Constitution guarantees grand jury charges and trial by jury to every civilian, and military jurisdiction ends where the civil courts are open and able to act.
• Respondent side (United States): In wartime a commander governs his military district under the laws of war, the President must be able to meet conspiracies quickly, and judges cannot review those measures while hostilities last.

Holding: Unanimous (9–0) that the commission lacked jurisdiction and Milligan must be discharged; 5–4 that neither the President nor Congress could authorize such trials where the courts were open. Chase and three others concurred, holding that Congress had that power but had not used it.

Mapp v. Ohio · 1961

Must state courts exclude evidence obtained through a search that violates the Fourth Amendment, or may each state choose its own remedy as Wolf v. Colorado (1949) allowed?

• Appellant side (Dollree Mapp): Police forced their way into her home without a genuine warrant, and a right against unreasonable searches means little if what they seize can still be used to convict.
• Appellee side (State of Ohio): Wolf left remedies to the states, the evidence was not taken from her person by brutal force, and juries should hear relevant evidence of guilt.

Holding: 6–3: The exclusionary rule applies to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, overruling Wolf v. Colorado on the question of remedy.

Gideon v. Wainwright · 1963

Does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to appoint counsel for a defendant charged with a felony who cannot afford a lawyer?

• Petitioner side (Clarence Earl Gideon): No layman can have a fair trial against a trained prosecutor, and the Betts v. Brady special-circumstances rule had proved confusing and unworkable.
• Respondent side (Louie L. Wainwright, Florida Division of Corrections): The Sixth Amendment's text binds federal courts, states should remain free to design their own systems under Betts, and a sweeping rule would unsettle thousands of convictions.

Holding: Unanimous (9–0): The right to counsel is fundamental and binds the states through the Fourteenth Amendment; Betts v. Brady is overruled.

Miranda v. Arizona · 1966

May statements obtained through police questioning of a suspect in custody be used against him if he was not first informed of his rights to remain silent and to have a lawyer?

• Petitioner side (Ernesto Miranda): The privilege against self-incrimination applies in the police station, and the pressures of incommunicado questioning make warnings and access to counsel necessary.
• Respondent side (State of Arizona): The due process voluntariness test already bars coerced confessions, police questioning is indispensable to solving crimes, and new rules for interrogation should come from legislatures.

Holding: 5–4: Before custodial interrogation a suspect must be warned of the right to remain silent, that statements can be used against him, and of the right to retained or appointed counsel, and questioning must stop if he invokes those rights.

Baker v. Carr · 1962

May federal courts hear a claim that a state legislature's failure to reapportion its seats since 1901 denies voters the equal protection of the laws, or is apportionment a nonjusticiable political question?

• Appellant side (Charles W. Baker and other Tennessee voters): A legislature elected under sixty-year-old districts will never reapportion itself, and Tennessee offers no other way to reform, so only the federal courts can protect the equal weight of their votes.
• Appellee side (Joe C. Carr, Tennessee Secretary of State): Apportionment is a political question for the people and their legislatures, courts have no manageable standard for weighing counties, and a dozen precedents beginning with Colegrove v. Green refused such suits.

Holding: 6–2: Federal courts have jurisdiction, the voters have standing, and an equal protection challenge to legislative apportionment is justiciable, not a political question.

Veazie Bank v. Fenno · 1869

Was the federal ten percent tax on the circulating notes of state banks an unapportioned direct tax, or an unconstitutional tax on a franchise granted by a state?

• Plaintiff side (Veazie Bank): The tax was a direct tax laid without apportionment, and its size showed a purpose to destroy banks that the states had a reserved power to charter.
• Defendant side (Fenno, collector of internal revenue): The tax was an ordinary duty on property issued under a charter, and Congress may protect the national currency it created by restraining competing notes.

Holding: 6–2: The tax was not a direct tax requiring apportionment, did not unconstitutionally tax a state franchise, and was a valid means of securing a uniform national currency.

Hepburn v. Griswold · 1870

Could Congress make paper United States notes a legal tender for debts contracted before the Legal Tender Act of 1862 was passed?

• Plaintiff in error side (Hepburn): The tender clause was a necessary and proper means of financing a war for national survival, so the debtor could discharge her note in United States notes.
• Defendant in error side (Griswold): No clause grants a power to make paper a legal tender, and forcing a creditor to accept depreciated notes for an earlier debt takes his property without due process.

Holding: 4–3: The Legal Tender Act could not constitutionally make United States notes a legal tender for debts contracted before its passage, so Griswold was not bound to accept them.

Legal Tender Cases (Knox v. Lee; Parker v. Davis) · 1871

Were the Civil War legal tender acts constitutional as applied to debts contracted both before and after their passage?

• Side defending the acts (Lee; Davis): A sovereign government must have the means of self-preservation, and the power to make its notes legal tender follows from the war, borrowing and currency powers together; contracts are made subject to that lawful authority.
• Side challenging the acts (Knox; Parker): No clause grants a power to make paper a legal tender, Hepburn v. Griswold rightly said so, and forcing creditors to accept depreciated notes defeats the justice the Constitution was ordained to secure.

Holding: 5–4: The legal tender acts were valid as applied to debts contracted before and after their passage, and Hepburn v. Griswold was overruled on the first point.

Munn v. Illinois · 1877

May a state fix the maximum charges that private grain warehouses may collect for storing grain, consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment and the Commerce Clause?

• Plaintiff in error side (Munn and Scott): Grain storage is a private business, and fixing its prices deprives owners of the use and fruits of their property without due process and intrudes on interstate commerce.
• Defendant in error side (Illinois): The Chicago elevators form a virtual monopoly at the gateway of the grain trade, and property so affected with a public interest has always been subject to regulation of its charges.

Holding: 7–2: Property affected with a public interest may be regulated by the state, the reasonableness of the rates is for the legislature, and the Illinois warehouse law was upheld.

Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. · 1895

Was the income tax of 1894, as applied to income from real estate and invested personal property, a direct tax that had to be apportioned among the states by population?

• Appellant side (Pollock): A tax on the income of property is a tax on the property itself, and the framers required such direct taxes to be apportioned to protect the states; the unapportioned 1894 tax is therefore void.
• Appellee side (Farmers' Loan & Trust Co., with the United States defending the tax): For a century Congress and the Court treated only head taxes and land taxes as direct, so an income tax is a duty or excise that need only be uniform.

Holding: 5–4 on rehearing: The tax on income from real and personal property was an unapportioned direct tax, and because it was central to the scheme, the entire income tax of 1894 was void.

Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States · 1911

Did the Standard Oil combination unlawfully restrain and monopolize interstate commerce in petroleum under the Sherman Antitrust Act, and what standard governs that act?

• Appellant side (Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey): The enterprise grew through efficiency and lawful purchases under state corporate law, and the act cannot be read to outlaw every combination of property without making ordinary business unlawful.
• Appellee side (United States): Through rebates, local price cutting, pipeline control and the absorption of rivals, the combination gained and kept control of the oil trade in violation of both sections of the act.

Holding: 8–1 (Harlan concurring in part and dissenting in part): The Sherman Act forbids undue restraints of trade judged by the rule of reason, the Standard Oil combination violated it, and the decree dissolving the holding company's control of its subsidiaries was affirmed with minor modifications.

A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States · 1935

Could Congress authorize the President to approve binding codes of fair competition under the National Industrial Recovery Act, and could those codes regulate wages, hours and trade practices of a local Brooklyn poultry business?

• Petitioner side (Schechter Poultry Corp.): Congress handed lawmaking power to the President and private trade groups without any standard, and the Schechters' slaughtering and local sales were not interstate commerce.
• Respondent side (United States): The national emergency called for cooperative industry codes under a policy Congress declared, and wages, hours and trade practices in the poultry business affected the flow of interstate commerce.

Holding: 9–0: The code provisions were invalid both as an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power and as regulation of intrastate transactions affecting interstate commerce only indirectly, and the convictions were reversed.

Norman v. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Co. (Gold Clause Cases) · 1935

May Congress, by the joint resolution of 5 June 1933, make private bonds promising payment in gold coin dischargeable dollar for dollar in devalued legal-tender currency?

• Petitioner side (Norman C. Norman): A gold clause fixes a definite measure of value that the parties bargained for; cancelling it after devaluation takes the creditor's property without due process and regulates contracts rather than currency.
• Respondent side (Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Co., supported by the United States): The clauses are promises to pay money, and Congress's power over the monetary system lets it prevent private agreements from defeating a uniform national currency.

Holding: 5–4: Gold clauses in private contracts are promises to pay money, Congress's monetary power overrides them, and the joint resolution is valid as applied to private obligations.

West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish · 1937

Does Washington's minimum wage law for women deprive employers of liberty of contract without due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment?

• Appellant side (West Coast Hotel Company): Adkins v. Children's Hospital settled that a wage fixed by the state without regard to the value of the work arbitrarily takes the employer's property and liberty of contract.
• Appellee side (Elsie Parrish): The legislature could reasonably find that women bargained from weakness and that wages below subsistence harmed their health and burdened the public, so the law is a valid exercise of the police power.

Holding: 5–4: The Constitution protects liberty subject to reasonable regulation in the interest of the community, the Washington minimum wage law is valid, and Adkins v. Children's Hospital is overruled.

NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. · 1937

May Congress, under the Commerce Clause, forbid a steel manufacturer to discharge employees for union activity and order their reinstatement under the National Labor Relations Act?

• Petitioner side (National Labor Relations Board): The company is an integrated interstate enterprise whose mines, railroads and mills form one national flow, so industrial strife at its works would directly obstruct interstate commerce that Congress may protect.
• Respondent side (Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation): Manufacturing is local production, not commerce; the act regulates labor relations Congress cannot reach, and its reinstatement and back-pay remedy denies due process and jury trial.

Holding: 5–4: Congress may regulate intrastate activities having a close and substantial relation to interstate commerce, and the act is valid as applied to the company's labor relations.

Helvering v. Davis · 1937

Are the old-age benefits of the Social Security Act and the payroll taxes that accompany them within Congress's power to tax and spend for the general welfare, or do they invade powers reserved to the states by the Tenth Amendment?

• Petitioner side (Guy T. Helvering, Commissioner of Internal Revenue): The taxes are valid excises paid into the general Treasury, and the benefits are spending for the general welfare in response to a need for old-age security that had become national and beyond the reach of the states.
• Respondent side (George P. Davis): Congress has no enumerated power to provide pensions; the taxes and benefits form a single plan to regulate employment that invades the powers reserved to the states.

Holding: 7–2: Congress may spend for the general welfare as it reasonably judges it, old-age benefits serve a national need, and the challenged provisions of the Social Security Act are valid.

Meyer v. Nebraska · 1923

Does a Nebraska statute forbidding the teaching of modern foreign languages to children who have not passed the eighth grade, as applied to a parochial-school teacher, deprive him of liberty without due process under the Fourteenth Amendment?

• Plaintiff in error side (Robert T. Meyer): The Fourteenth Amendment protects a teacher's right to pursue a lawful calling and parents' right to engage him to instruct their children, and knowledge of German endangers no one.
• Defendant in error side (State of Nebraska): The state may shape the education of future citizens, and after the war it reasonably sought to make English the mother tongue of every child by reserving early schooling for English.

Holding: 7–2: The liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment includes the teacher's calling and parents' control of their children's education, and the statute as applied is arbitrary and invalid.

Pierce v. Society of Sisters · 1925

May Oregon require nearly all children between eight and sixteen to attend public schools, consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment's protection of liberty and property?

• Appellant side (Governor Walter M. Pierce and Oregon officials): Educating citizens is a public concern the state may secure through common public schools; corporations cannot claim the Fourteenth Amendment's liberty, and the suits were premature because the act was not yet in force.
• Appellee side (Society of Sisters and Hill Military Academy): The act would destroy lawful, useful schools and their property, and it violates the liberty of parents to choose schools giving their children appropriate mental and religious training.

Holding: 9–0: The act unreasonably interferes with the liberty of parents and guardians to direct the upbringing and education of their children, and the schools may obtain injunctions protecting their business and property.

Everson v. Board of Education · 1947

Does a New Jersey township's reimbursement of bus fares for children attending Catholic parochial schools, along with public schools, violate the Establishment Clause as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment?

• Appellant side (Arch R. Everson): Taxing all residents to carry children to schools that teach a particular faith supports religious instruction, which the Establishment Clause forbids, and it serves a private rather than a public purpose.
• Appellee side (Board of Education of the Township of Ewing): The fares are a general safety benefit for all schoolchildren, like police and fire protection; nothing goes to the schools, and excluding parochial pupils would penalize families for their faith.

Holding: 5–4: The Establishment Clause applies to the states and forbids any tax to support religious institutions, but New Jersey's neutral program helping all children travel safely to accredited schools does not breach the wall between church and state.

Sweatt v. Painter · 1950

Did Texas satisfy the Equal Protection Clause by offering a Black applicant a separate state law school instead of admitting him to the University of Texas Law School?

• Petitioner side (Heman Marion Sweatt): The separate school was unequal in faculty, library, standing and access to the legal community, and separation itself prevented an equal professional education; Plessy should be reconsidered.
• Respondent side (Theophilus S. Painter, University of Texas officials): Plessy permits separate facilities that are substantially equal, and Texas promptly and in good faith created a comparable law school.

Holding: 9–0: The separate law school did not offer substantial equality in measurable or intangible respects, so the Equal Protection Clause required Sweatt's admission to the University of Texas Law School; the Court did not reach whether Plessy should be reexamined.

School District of Abington Township v. Schempp · 1963

Do state laws requiring public schools to open the day with Bible reading and the Lord's Prayer, with excusal on parental request, violate the Establishment Clause as applied to the states?

• Appellant side (School District of Abington Township): The readings serve secular ends such as moral instruction and the teaching of literature, participation is voluntary, and forbidding them would establish a religion of secularism and slight the free exercise of families who want them.
• Appellee side (Edward and Sidney Schempp): Reading Scripture and reciting prayer at the state's direction are religious ceremonies, and an excusal provision does not relieve children of the pressure to take part.

Holding: 8–1: State-required devotional Bible reading and recitation of the Lord's Prayer in public schools violate the Establishment Clause because their purpose and primary effect advance religion, though objective study of the Bible and religion remains permitted.

Lemon v. Kurtzman · 1971

Do Pennsylvania's reimbursement of church-related schools for secular instruction and Rhode Island's salary supplements for their teachers of secular subjects violate the Establishment Clause?

• Appellant side (Alton J. Lemon and other taxpayers): Public money would sustain schools whose mission includes religious formation, and keeping it out of religious teaching would require the state to monitor parochial classrooms and accounts.
• Appellee side (David H. Kurtzman, Pennsylvania Superintendent of Public Instruction): The state buys only secular instruction it would otherwise provide, under safeguards that bar religious use, and families who choose religious schools relieve the public treasury.

Holding: 8–0 (Pennsylvania; Marshall not participating) and 8–1 (Rhode Island; White dissenting): Both programs fostered excessive government entanglement with religion under a three-part test of secular purpose, primary effect and entanglement, and were held unconstitutional.

San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez · 1973

Does a state school-finance system that relies on local property taxes, producing large spending differences between districts, violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?

• Appellant side (San Antonio Independent School District and Texas officials): No definable class of poor persons is wholly denied an education, the Constitution does not guarantee education, and preserving local control of schools is a legitimate reason for a system used in nearly every state.
• Appellee side (Demetrio P. Rodriguez and Edgewood parents): The system classifies children by the property wealth of their district and burdens education, an interest so tied to speech and voting that the state must justify the disparities under strict scrutiny.

Holding: 5–4: Because district wealth is not a suspect class and education is not a fundamental right under the federal Constitution, only rational-basis review applied, and the Texas system was rationally related to the state's interest in local control.

Plyler v. Doe · 1982

May Texas, consistent with the Equal Protection Clause, deny undocumented school-age children the free public education it provides to citizens and lawfully admitted residents?

• Appellant side (James L. Plyler, Tyler Independent School District, and Texas): Persons who entered unlawfully are not within the state's jurisdiction for equal protection purposes, education is not a fundamental right, and the state may rationally reserve limited school funds for lawful residents.
• Appellee side (the Doe families): The children are persons within Texas's jurisdiction who bear no responsibility for their status, and denying them schooling inflicts lasting harm without serving any substantial state purpose.

Holding: 5–4: Because the law imposed a lifetime hardship on children not accountable for their status, Texas had to show that it furthered a substantial state interest, and it made no such showing, so the statute violated the Equal Protection Clause.

Zelman v. Simmons-Harris · 2002

Does Ohio's Pilot Project Scholarship Program, which gives Cleveland families tuition aid usable at participating private schools including religious ones, violate the Establishment Clause?

• Petitioner side (Susan Tave Zelman, Ohio Superintendent of Public Instruction): The program is neutral toward religion, serves the secular purpose of helping children in a failing district, and reaches religious schools only through parents' independent choices among many public and private options.
• Respondent side (Doris Simmons-Harris and other Ohio taxpayers): The program channels public money to religious schools that use it for religious teaching, and with nearly all participating schools religious, parents' choice is neither neutral nor genuinely free.

Holding: 5–4: Because the program is neutral toward religion and directs aid to religious schools only through the genuine and independent choices of individual parents, it is a program of true private choice that does not violate the Establishment Clause.

Jacobson v. Massachusetts · 1905

Did a Massachusetts statute allowing local boards of health to require smallpox vaccination, enforced by a five-dollar fine, deprive Henning Jacobson of liberty without due process or deny him equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment?

• Plaintiff in error side (Henning Jacobson): Compulsory vaccination is an unreasonable and arbitrary invasion of a free person's right to care for his own body, its medical value was disputed, and he was entitled to show the jury why it was dangerous for him.
• Defendant in error side (Commonwealth of Massachusetts): The police power plainly includes measures to stop epidemics, the legislature and local boards may rely on prevailing medical opinion, and the penalty for refusal was modest.

Holding: 7–2: The statute was a reasonable exercise of the state's police power to protect public health during a smallpox epidemic, and the liberty secured by the Fourteenth Amendment does not exempt an adult from such a regulation, though courts may intervene against arbitrary or cruel applications.

Webb v. United States · 1919

Under the Harrison Narcotic Act, is a physician's order for morphine, written for an habitual user to continue his accustomed use rather than to cure the habit, a valid prescription?

• Plaintiff in error side (Webb and Goldbaum): The doctor and druggist had registered, paid the special tax and kept the required records; a revenue law could not govern medical practice, and a registered physician's written order was a prescription.
• Defendant in error side (United States): The prescription exemption covered genuine medical treatment, and thousands of fifty-cent orders written for continued use were a scheme to sell morphine outside the act's controls.

Holding: 5–4: Relying on United States v. Doremus, the Court held that section 2 validly confined sales to order forms and genuine prescriptions and that an order written merely to maintain a user's habit was not a prescription.

Linder v. United States · 1925

Does a registered physician violate the Harrison Narcotic Act by giving, in good faith, a few tablets of morphine and cocaine to an addicted patient to relieve the conditions of her addiction?

• Petitioner side (Charles O. Linder): The count alleged neither bad faith nor improper medicine; a revenue law cannot make a doctor's good-faith treatment of a patient a federal crime.
• Respondent side (United States): Under Webb and Behrman, supplying drugs to satisfy an addicted person's craving falls outside professional practice and is an unlawful sale without an order form.

Holding: 9–0: Because the Harrison Act is a revenue measure and direct control of medical practice belongs to the states, a physician's good-faith provision of a small quantity of drugs to relieve an addicted patient's condition was not shown to be an offense, and the conviction was reversed.

Buck v. Bell · 1927

Does a Virginia statute authorizing the compulsory sterilization of inmates of state institutions found to have hereditary mental conditions deny due process or equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment?

• Plaintiff in error side (Carrie Buck): The state has no power to take away a person's capacity to bear children, and a law reaching only those in institutions denies equal protection to the few it touches.
• Defendant in error side (John H. Bell, superintendent): The statute provides notice, a guardian, a hearing and appeals, rests on legislative findings about heredity, and serves the welfare of patients and society.

Holding: 8–1: The Court upheld the statute, holding that its procedure satisfied due process, that the police power recognized in Jacobson v. Massachusetts extended to the measure, and that applying the policy as far as the state's means allowed met equal protection.

Robinson v. California · 1962

May a state, consistent with the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, make it a crime for a person to be addicted to the use of narcotics, without proof of any act of use, purchase or possession within the state?

• Appellant side (Lawrence Robinson): The statute as construed punishes a condition rather than conduct, and imprisoning a person for an illness is cruel and unusual punishment.
• Appellee side (State of California): The misdemeanor is one stage of a comprehensive program of prevention and cure aimed at addicts who retain self-control, and the state may deter a condition that threatens future crime.

Holding: 6–2: Because the jury could convict Robinson for the status of addiction alone, which California conceded to be an illness, the statute as applied inflicted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Griswold v. Connecticut · 1965

Does the Constitution forbid a state to punish those who counsel married couples in the use of contraceptives, under a law prohibiting any person from using them?

• Appellant side (Estelle Griswold and Dr. C. Lee Buxton): The liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment includes a sphere of marital privacy that a law reaching into the use of contraceptives within marriage invades.
• Appellee side (State of Connecticut): The legislature acted within its police power over public morals; no provision of the Constitution names the claimed right, and courts should not override elected lawmakers on social policy.

Holding: 7–2: The Court reversed the convictions, holding that the law violated a right of marital privacy found in the penumbras of several Bill of Rights guarantees (with Goldberg relying also on the Ninth Amendment and Harlan on due process liberty), over dissents by Black and Stewart.

O'Connor v. Donaldson · 1975

May a State confine, against his will and without treatment, a mentally ill person who is dangerous to no one and capable of living safely in freedom?

• Petitioner side (Dr. J. B. O'Connor): The superintendent acted in good faith under a state law he believed authorized custodial confinement of the mentally ill, and the appeals court's constitutional right to treatment has no basis in the Constitution.
• Respondent side (Kenneth Donaldson): The jury found him harmless and untreated; confining such a person for nearly fifteen years, while responsible friends offered to care for him, violated his right to liberty.

Holding: 9–0: A State cannot constitutionally confine without more a nondangerous individual capable of surviving safely in freedom alone or with willing family or friends; the judgment was vacated and remanded for reconsideration of the superintendent's immunity defense.

Addington v. Texas · 1979

What standard of proof does the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause require in a civil proceeding to commit a person involuntarily and indefinitely to a state mental hospital?

• Appellant side (Frank O'Neal Addington): Indefinite commitment brings a loss of liberty and stigma as grave as a criminal conviction, so the State should have to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
• Appellee side (State of Texas): Commitment is care, not punishment, and because predictions of dangerousness are uncertain, a preponderance of the evidence should suffice.

Holding: 8–0 (Justice Powell took no part): Due process requires at least clear and convincing evidence for involuntary civil commitment, more than a preponderance but not proof beyond a reasonable doubt; the judgment was vacated and remanded.

Diamond v. Chakrabarty · 1980

Is a live, human-made micro-organism a manufacture or composition of matter that may be patented under Section 101 of the Patent Act?

• Petitioner side (Sidney A. Diamond, Commissioner of Patents): The Commissioner argued that Congress's separate plant patent statutes, including the 1970 exclusion of bacteria, showed that the general patent law does not cover living things, and that so novel a question belongs to Congress.
• Respondent side (Ananda Mohan Chakrabarty): Chakrabarty argued that the statute's words are broad, that the law distinguishes products of nature from human inventions, and that his engineered bacterium, found nowhere in nature, was an invention.

Holding: 5–4: a live, human-made micro-organism with markedly different characteristics from any found in nature is patentable subject matter, because the relevant distinction is between products of nature and human-made inventions, not between living and inanimate things.

Youngberg v. Romeo · 1982

Does the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause give a person involuntarily committed to a state institution rights to safe conditions, freedom from bodily restraint and training?

• Petitioner side (Duane Youngberg and Pennhurst administrators): The administrators argued that they provided food, shelter, clothing and medical care, and that decisions about restraint and training belonged to professional staff in an institution with limited resources.
• Respondent side (Nicholas Romeo, by his mother): Romeo's counsel argued that commitment left him fundamental liberties in safety and freedom of movement that only compelling necessity could limit, and that he was owed minimally adequate habilitation.

Holding: 9–0 (on the judgment): a committed resident retains liberty interests in reasonable safety, freedom from unreasonable restraint and the training those interests require, and decisions by qualified professionals are presumptively valid unless they substantially depart from accepted professional judgment.

Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health · 1990

Does the Due Process Clause forbid Missouri from requiring clear and convincing evidence of an incompetent patient's own wishes before her guardians may withdraw artificial nutrition and hydration?

• Petitioner side (Nancy Cruzan, by her parents and coguardians): The Cruzans argued that every person has a liberty interest in refusing unwanted medical treatment, that it survives incompetence, and that loving parents should be allowed to exercise it for their daughter.
• Respondent side (Director, Missouri Department of Health): Missouri argued that it may protect human life, guard against irreversible mistakes and abuse, and require reliable proof of what the patient herself wanted.

Holding: 5–4: assuming a competent person has a protected right to refuse lifesaving nutrition and hydration, a State may require clear and convincing evidence of an incompetent patient's wishes before a surrogate withdraws it, and need not accept the substituted judgment of family members.

Washington v. Glucksberg · 1997

Does the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protect a right to assistance in committing suicide, so that Washington's ban on aiding a suicide is invalid as applied to physicians helping competent, terminally ill adults?

• Petitioner side (State of Washington): Washington argued that the asserted right has no root in the nation's legal traditions and that its ban protects life, prevents suicide, preserves medical ethics and shields vulnerable people from pressure.
• Respondent side (Harold Glucksberg and other physicians): The physicians argued that Casey and Cruzan protect intimate personal choices about one's body and the end of life, and that a dying patient's request for help belongs within that liberty.

Holding: 9–0: the asserted right to assistance in committing suicide is not a fundamental liberty protected by the Due Process Clause, and Washington's ban is rationally related to legitimate state interests.

Olmstead v. L. C. · 1999

Does Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act require a State to place persons with mental disabilities in community settings rather than institutions when the State's treatment professionals find community placement appropriate?

• Petitioner side (Tommy Olmstead and Georgia officials): Georgia argued that discrimination means treating one group worse than a similarly situated group, that the women were not denied anything because of their disabilities, and that its limited funds were already committed to serving others.
• Respondent side (L. C. and E. W.): The two women argued that Congress identified isolation and segregation of people with disabilities as discrimination, and that keeping them hospitalized after their clinicians recommended community care violated the statute.

Holding: 6–3: unjustified institutional isolation is discrimination based on disability under Title II, so States must provide community-based treatment when their professionals find it appropriate, the person does not oppose it, and it can be reasonably accommodated in light of the State's resources and the needs of others (the cost-defense discussion in Part III-B spoke for a plurality of four).

Gonzales v. Raich · 2005

Does Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce, with the Necessary and Proper Clause, allow the Controlled Substances Act to reach marijuana grown at home and used locally for medical purposes in compliance with California law?

• Petitioner side (Alberto R. Gonzales, Attorney General): The government argued that Congress built a comprehensive scheme to control the national market in dangerous drugs and that exempting home-grown marijuana, a fungible commodity with an interstate market, would undercut it.
• Respondent side (Angel Raich and Diane Monson): The patients argued that marijuana grown and used in one home without sale is neither commerce nor interstate, and that state-sanctioned medical use is a separate class beyond federal reach.

Holding: 6–3: Congress may regulate purely local cultivation and use of marijuana because it is part of an economic class of activities that, in the aggregate, substantially affects interstate commerce, and Congress rationally declined to exempt state-authorized medical use.

National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius · 2012

Did Congress have power under the Commerce Clause or the taxing power to require most Americans to maintain health insurance, and could it condition all of a State's existing Medicaid funds on accepting the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion?

• Petitioner side (National Federation of Independent Business and the challenging States): The challengers argued that Congress may regulate commerce but may not compel people to buy a product, that the payment was a penalty rather than a tax, and that threatening all Medicaid funds left the States no real choice.
• Respondent side (Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services): The government argued that nearly everyone uses health care, that the uninsured shift large costs onto others, that the mandate could be sustained as a tax in any event, and that Congress may attach conditions to federal funds.

Holding: 5–4 upholding the mandate as a tax; 7–2 holding that the Medicaid expansion's threatened loss of existing funds was unconstitutionally coercive: the individual mandate exceeds the commerce power but stands as an exercise of the taxing power, and the Secretary may not withdraw existing Medicaid funds from States that decline the expansion.

Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc. · 2013

Is a naturally occurring human gene segment, such as BRCA1 or BRCA2, patent eligible because it has been isolated from the genome, and is synthetic cDNA patent eligible?

• Petitioner side (Association for Molecular Pathology et al.): Genes are products of nature that cannot be patented, and Myriad's patents had ended competing BRCA tests and hindered research and patient care.
• Respondent side (Myriad Genetics, Inc.): Isolation creates a new molecule by breaking chemical bonds, the discovery required costly research, and the Patent Office had long granted such patents.

Holding: 9–0: A naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature and not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated, but cDNA is patent eligible because it is not naturally occurring.

SEC v. W. J. Howey Co. · 1946 Series 65

Is the sale of strips of citrus grove land, paired with a contract for the seller's affiliate to cultivate and market the fruit, an investment contract and therefore a security under the Securities Act of 1933?

• Petitioner side (Securities and Exchange Commission): The land and service contracts were one offering of a share in a citrus enterprise run by the companies, an investment contract that had to be registered.
• Respondent side (W. J. Howey Co. and Howey-in-the-Hills Service, Inc.): Buyers received deeds to real land of independent value after inspecting it, and the service contract was a separate, optional agreement.

Holding: 6–1 (Justice Jackson took no part): An investment contract is a scheme in which a person invests money in a common enterprise expecting profits solely from the efforts of others, and the Howey offering met that test.

Why it matters for advisers: Howey supplies the four-part test (money, common enterprise, expected profits, efforts of others) used to decide whether an arrangement is an investment contract and therefore a security, so advisers and Series 65 candidates meet it whenever an unfamiliar product must be classified.

SEC v. Capital Gains Research Bureau, Inc. · 1963 Series 65

May the Securities and Exchange Commission obtain an injunction under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 requiring an adviser to disclose that it buys securities before recommending them and sells after the price rises, without proving intent to injure or actual loss?

• Petitioner side (Securities and Exchange Commission): The Act reaches any practice that operates as a fraud or deceit on clients, and an adviser who secretly profits from its own recommendations has a conflict clients are entitled to know about.
• Respondent side (Capital Gains Research Bureau, Inc., and Harry P. Schwarzmann): The advice was honest and sound, clients lost nothing, and Congress did not write an express disclosure duty into the Advisers Act.

Holding: 7–1 (Justice Douglas took no part): The Advisers Act recognizes the fiduciary nature of the advisory relationship, and undisclosed scalping operates as a fraud or deceit that the Commission may enjoin without proving intent to injure or actual loss.

Why it matters for advisers: The case established that the Advisers Act treats an investment adviser as a fiduciary who must make full and fair disclosure of material conflicts of interest, such as trading ahead of recommendations, which is why advisers and Series 65 candidates study it as the source of that duty.

Ernst & Ernst v. Hochfelder · 1976 Series 65

May a private action for damages under Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5 proceed without any allegation of scienter, an intent to deceive, manipulate or defraud?

• Petitioner side (Ernst & Ernst): The statute's words manipulative, deceptive, device and contrivance describe intentional wrongdoing, and Congress provided negligence remedies only in specific sections with their own limits.
• Respondent side (Hochfelder and other customers): Rule 10b-5 reaches any practice that operates as a fraud, the securities laws are remedial and should be read flexibly, and investors lose as much from a careless audit as from deliberate deceit.

Holding: 6–2 (Justice Stevens took no part): a private damages action under Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5 requires proof of scienter; negligence alone is not enough.

Why it matters for advisers: Since this decision, private plaintiffs alleging fraud under Rule 10b-5 against advisers, brokers or other market professionals must prove scienter, an intent to deceive or at least recklessness under later lower-court rulings. Ordinary negligence claims proceed under other provisions or state law instead.

TSC Industries, Inc. v. Northway, Inc. · 1976 Series 65

What is the standard of materiality for omissions from a proxy statement under Rule 14a-9, and were the omissions here material as a matter of law?

• Petitioner side (TSC Industries and National Industries): A test asking whether a shareholder might consider a fact important sets the bar far too low, and the proxy statement already disclosed National's stake, its board seats and the premium offered.
• Respondent side (Northway, Inc.): The proxy rules exist to protect shareholders and management controls the document, so doubts should favor disclosure, and the omitted facts about National's control and the deal's terms were plainly important.

Holding: 8–0 (Justice Stevens took no part): an omitted fact is material if there is a substantial likelihood that a reasonable shareholder would consider it important in deciding how to vote, and none of the omissions was material as a matter of law.

Why it matters for advisers: The definition announced here, later applied to Rule 10b-5, is the measure regulators and courts use when deciding whether an adviser's or broker's omission or misstatement to clients concerns a material fact. It asks what a reasonable investor would consider important, not what might conceivably interest someone.

Transamerica Mortgage Advisors, Inc. v. Lewis · 1979 Series 65

Does the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 create a private cause of action for damages or other relief in favor of persons aggrieved by an adviser's violations?

• Petitioner side (Transamerica Mortgage Advisors, Inc., et al.): Congress provided criminal penalties, Commission suits and administrative sanctions to enforce the Act, and courts should not add private remedies Congress did not enact.
• Respondent side (Lewis, a trust shareholder): The Act was written to protect advisory clients, every court of appeals to consider the question had allowed damages, and clients need a remedy for breaches of the duties the Act imposes.

Holding: 5–4: The Act implies a limited private remedy under Section 215 to void an advisory contract and obtain rescission and restitution, but confers no other private cause of action, including damages under Section 206.

Why it matters for advisers: Under Transamerica, a client may sue under the Advisers Act only to rescind an advisory contract made in violation of the Act and recover fees paid, not for damages, while enforcement of the antifraud provision rests with the Commission; advisers and Series 65 candidates study it as the rule on private remedies under the Act.

Chiarella v. United States · 1980 Series 65

Does a person who learns from one corporation's confidential documents that it plans a takeover bid violate Section 10(b) by trading in the target company's stock without disclosing the impending bid?

• Petitioner side (Vincent Chiarella): He owed no duty to the sellers, strangers he dealt with only through the anonymous market, and silence is fraud only where the law imposes a duty to speak.
• Respondent side (United States): Anyone who regularly receives material nonpublic information may not use it to trade, because such trading is unfair to other investors; alternatively, he breached a duty to the acquiring companies.

Holding: 6–3: Silence is fraud under Section 10(b) only where a duty to disclose arises from a relationship of trust and confidence, which Chiarella lacked with the sellers, and the misappropriation theory could not support a conviction because it was not put to the jury.

Why it matters for advisers: Chiarella holds that trading on material nonpublic information violates Rule 10b-5 when the trader owes a duty of trust and confidence, as insiders and fiduciaries such as advisers do, rather than whenever information is unequal; advisers and Series 65 candidates encounter it as the starting point of insider-trading law.

Aaron v. SEC · 1980 Series 65

Must the SEC prove scienter to obtain an injunction against violations of Section 17(a) of the Securities Act, Section 10(b) of the Exchange Act and Rule 10b-5?

• Petitioner side (Aaron): Hochfelder read Section 10(b) to require intent to deceive, and the same statutory words cannot mean something less when the SEC rather than an investor brings the suit.
• Respondent side (Securities and Exchange Commission): Public injunction suits differ from private damages actions, equity has long stopped misrepresentation without proof of intent, and the agency needs to halt deception before investors lose money.

Holding: 6–3: the SEC must prove scienter to enjoin violations of Section 10(b), Rule 10b-5 and Section 17(a)(1), but not Sections 17(a)(2) and 17(a)(3); the judgment was vacated and remanded.

Why it matters for advisers: The ruling means the SEC can obtain injunctions against advisers, brokers and their supervisors under Sections 17(a)(2) and 17(a)(3) by showing negligence, while Section 10(b) and Section 17(a)(1) claims require intent. The facts also illustrate how supervisory inaction after warnings can lead to enforcement.

Dirks v. SEC · 1983 Series 65

Did an analyst who received material nonpublic information about a corporate fraud from company insiders, and passed it to investors who traded, violate the antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws?

• Petitioner side (Raymond Dirks): He was a stranger to Equity Funding who owed its shareholders no duty, and analysts must be free to investigate companies by questioning insiders.
• Respondent side (Securities and Exchange Commission): A tippee who knowingly receives confidential information from an insider inherits the insider's duty to disclose it publicly or refrain from trading, whatever his motive.

Holding: 6–3: A tippee inherits an insider's duty to disclose or abstain only when the insider breached a fiduciary duty by disclosing for personal benefit and the tippee knows or should know of the breach; Secrist sought only to expose a fraud, so Dirks breached no duty.

Why it matters for advisers: Dirks holds that a person who receives a tip inherits the insider's duty to disclose or abstain only when the insider disclosed for personal benefit, including a gift to a trading relative or friend, and the recipient knows or should know of the breach; advisers and Series 65 candidates meet it as the rule for tippee liability.

Lowe v. SEC · 1985 Series 65

May a person whose investment adviser registration was revoked be permanently enjoined from publishing impersonal investment newsletters because he is not registered under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940?

• Petitioner side (Christopher Lowe et al.): An order forbidding the publication of truthful market commentary would be a prior restraint on the press, and impersonal newsletters are not the business of an investment adviser.
• Respondent side (Securities and Exchange Commission): The Act covers anyone who advises others for pay through publications or writings, and a person barred for misconduct should not evade the bar by mailing his advice.

Holding: 8–0 (Justice Powell took no part): Impersonal newsletters of general and regular circulation fall within the Act's exclusion for bona fide publications, so the petitioners were not investment advisers and could not be enjoined; the Court did not reach the First Amendment question.

Why it matters for advisers: Lowe holds that publishers of impersonal, genuine and regularly circulated financial publications fall within the Advisers Act's exclusion and need not register, while advice tailored to particular clients remains regulated; advisers and Series 65 candidates meet it in the definition of who counts as an investment adviser.

Shearson/American Express Inc. v. McMahon · 1987 Series 65

Are predispute agreements between brokerage firms and their customers to arbitrate claims under Section 10(b) of the Exchange Act and under civil RICO enforceable under the Federal Arbitration Act?

• Petitioner side (Shearson/American Express Inc. and Mary Ann McNulty): The Arbitration Act reflects a strong federal policy favoring arbitration, the Exchange Act's antiwaiver clause concerns substantive duties rather than choice of forum, and SEC oversight since 1975 makes industry arbitration adequate to protect investors.
• Respondent side (Eugene and Julia McMahon): Wilko v. Swan and decades of lower-court decisions barred compelled arbitration of securities claims, the antiwaiver clause protects the federal courts' jurisdiction, and RICO's public purposes require a judicial forum.

Holding: 5–4 on the Exchange Act claims (unanimous on the RICO claims): both the Section 10(b) claims and the civil RICO claim must be arbitrated under the customer agreement.

Why it matters for advisers: The decision made predispute arbitration clauses enforceable for federal securities claims, which is why disputes between customers and broker-dealers are now generally resolved in industry arbitration rather than court. Advisers' client agreements may also contain such clauses, subject to state law and regulatory limits.

Basic Inc. v. Levinson · 1988 Series 65

When are preliminary merger negotiations material under Rule 10b-5, and may investors who traded in an efficient market be presumed to have relied on a company's public misstatements?

• Petitioner side (Basic Incorporated and its directors): Merger talks should become material only at agreement in principle, a bright line that protects confidential bargaining and spares investors premature hopes, and reliance is an element of fraud that each plaintiff must prove.
• Respondent side (Levinson and other former shareholders): Materiality depends on what investors find significant, not on a fixed stage of negotiations, and in impersonal modern markets investors rely on the integrity of a price that absorbs a company's public statements.

Holding: Unanimous among six on materiality and 4–2 on reliance (Rehnquist, Scalia and Kennedy took no part): the TSC standard applies with a probability-magnitude balance for contingent events, and reliance may be presumed under the fraud-on-the-market theory, subject to rebuttal.

Why it matters for advisers: The probability-magnitude test governs whether pending events such as mergers are material when firms or advisers speak about them, and the presumption of reliance underlies most securities fraud class actions. The opinion also notes that silence, absent a duty to disclose, is not misleading.

Reves v. Ernst & Young · 1990 Series 65

Were demand notes sold by a farm cooperative to its members and the public securities under Section 3(a)(10) of the Securities Exchange Act, or did they fall outside it as ordinary notes or under the exclusion for notes maturing within nine months?

• Petitioner side (Reves and other noteholders): The notes were sold widely and advertised as investments, and the short-term exclusion was meant only for commercial paper traded among sophisticated parties.
• Respondent side (Ernst & Young): Many notes are ordinary commercial instruments, these resembled no recognized security, and a demand note is due immediately and so falls within the nine-month exclusion.

Holding: 5–4 on whether the notes were securities: notes are presumed securities under the family resemblance test (joined by all nine), and these demand notes were securities not covered by the short-term exclusion.

Why it matters for advisers: The family resemblance test decides whether promissory notes offered to investors are securities, and therefore whether registration, antifraud rules and the duties of those who recommend them apply. Notes sold broadly to the public as investments are generally treated as securities under this test.

United States v. O'Hagan · 1997 Series 65

May a person who trades on confidential information taken in breach of a duty to its source be convicted under Section 10(b), and did the SEC have authority to adopt Rule 14e-3(a)?

• Petitioner side (United States): O'Hagan deceived his law firm and its client by feigning loyalty while secretly trading on their tender-offer plans, a fraud completed in the trade itself; Rule 14e-3(a) is a reasonable means of preventing tender-offer fraud that is hard to prove.
• Respondent side (James Herman O'Hagan): He owed no duty to the Pillsbury shareholders he traded with and so deceived no one in the market, and a rule reaching trades without any breach of duty goes beyond the fraud Congress let the SEC define.

Holding: 6–3 on Section 10(b) (7–2 on Rule 14e-3(a)): the misappropriation theory supports Section 10(b) liability, Rule 14e-3(a) is a valid exercise of the SEC's power to prevent tender-offer fraud, and the mail fraud convictions were reinstated.

Why it matters for advisers: The decision confirmed that anyone entrusted with confidential information, including an adviser or employee who owes a duty to a firm or client, violates Section 10(b) by secretly trading on it. Rule 14e-3(a), upheld here, separately forbids trading on nonpublic tender-offer information regardless of any duty.

SEC v. Edwards · 2004 Series 65

Is a moneymaking scheme excluded from the term investment contract simply because it offers a contractual entitlement to a fixed, rather than a variable, return?

• Petitioner side (Securities and Exchange Commission): The blue sky cases behind the Howey test, the SEC's consistent practice and the purposes of the securities laws all treat promises of fixed returns as investment contracts.
• Respondent side (Charles Edwards): Earlier decisions defined profits as capital appreciation or participation in earnings, and a return guaranteed by contract does not come from the efforts of others.

Holding: 9–0: an investment scheme promising a fixed rate of return can be an investment contract and thus a security under the federal securities laws.

Why it matters for advisers: Offerings that promise passive investors a set return, such as leaseback, note or similar programs, can be securities subject to registration and antifraud rules. Professionals who sell or recommend them must treat them accordingly.