Category: Historical

In Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972), the U.S. Supreme Court held that a Wisconsin law mandating that children attend school violated the First Amendment. In the landmark decision, the unanimous Court held that the parents’ Freedom of Religio...

In Mapp v. Ohio, 367 US 643 (1961), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that evidence obtained through a search in violation of the Fourth Amendment could not be used as evidence in a state criminal case. The decision relied on the doctrine of selective inc...

In Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an Executive Order that banned American citizens of Japanese descent from certain areas in the name of national security. The case was just one of several lawsuits c...

In Washington v. Davis, 426 U.S. 229 (1976), the U.S. Supreme Court established that racially discriminatory laws are only unconstitutional if they have both a discriminatory purpose and a discriminatory impact. As explained by Justice Byron White...

In Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1(1976), the U.S. Supreme Court held that while campaign contribution limits implicate First Amendment interests, they withstand constitutional scrutiny so long as they are closely drawn to serve a sufficiently impor...

In Murray v. Schooner Charming Betsy 6 U.S.64, 2 L.Ed.208 (1804), Chief Justice John Marshall stated that “an act of Congress ought never to be construed to violate the law of nations if any other possible construction remains.” This early Su...

In Talbot v. Seeman, 5 U.S. 1 (1801), the U.S. Supreme Court considered the circumstances under which salvage rights attach to a neutral vessel, captured by enemy forces, and then recaptured by the United States Navy. The Court’s decision, which ...

In Barron ex rel. Tiernan v. Mayor of Baltimore, 7 Pet. 243 (1833), the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Bill of Rights placed limits on the national government and not on state governments. The Court, in an opinion written by Chief Justice John ...

In Corfield v. Coryell, 6 F. Cas. 546 (1823), Supreme Court Justice Bushrod Washington interprets the Privileges and Immunities Clause of Article 4, Section 2 and articulates a list of fundamental rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Al...

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’ dissent in Abrams v. United States 250 U.S. 616 (1919) is widely regarded as one of the most famous dissents in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court. It sowed the seeds for the modern interpretation of freedom of...