Agenda

• Today: Major Court Cases

• Wednesday: Civil Rights

• Next week: Wrap up

    - Monday: Review and Study Guide Day
    - Wednesday: Module 1 Quiz

Important court cases

• Knowing what the court cases are basically about can help you eliminate really bad choices on the exam

    - Know the general categories for each case (slide headings)
    - Know the specific thing the case addressed (in parentheses by each case)
    - Then try to know some details about the case

• Understanding the Court cases is useful in understanding how the Constitution has been interpreted and applied over time

• The Civil Rights cases are good background for that topic

Government Structure

• Marbury v. Madison (1803): established judicial review)
• McCulloch v. Maryland (1819): federalism - federal supremacy; implied powers of Congress
• Prinz v. United States 1997: federalism - state’s not agents of the federal government - rare 10th Amendment case

Government Structure - the Presidency

• United States v. Nixon (1974)

    - Executive privilege
    - The Supreme Court does have the final voice in determining constitutional questions
    - no person, not even the president of the United States, is completely above the law
    - the president cannot use executive privilege as an excuse to withhold evidence that is "demonstrably relevant in a criminal trial."
    - do not confuse with Nixon v. United States (1993) (impeachment - Senate has sole power to try impeachments - Courts cannot resolve issues)

Government Structure - the Presidency

• Nixon v. Fitzgerald (1982)

    - a president is entitled to absolute immunity from liability for civil damages based on his official acts

• Clinton v. Jones (1997)

    - a sitting president has no immunity from civil law litigation except under highly unusual circumstances.
    - a President has no immunity for unofficial acts, even if those acts occurred while he was in office.

Government Structure - the Presidency

• Trump v. United States (2024)

    - A former U.S. President has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority,
    - A former U.S. President has at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts;
    - A former U.S. President does not have immunity from prosecution for unofficial acts, even if those acts occurred while he was in office.

Government Structure - Federal Elections

• Bush v. Gore (2000)

    - elections
    - 14th Amendment equal protection clause applies to elections
    - stopped Florida recount in 2000 presidential election
    - Recount was later completed unofficially and Bush won Florida by 537 votes under the Gore plan

Civil Liberties - Privacy and Abortion

• Griswold v. Connecticut (privacy - 1965)

    - created the right to privacy 
    - issue was birth control

• Roe v. Wade (abortion - 1973)

    - created a right to abortion under the right to privacy
    - trimester framework
    - first trimester, no regulation
    - second trimester, regulation to protect state interest in the life and health of the mother
    - third trimester, states can prohibit abortion to protect the state interest in the fetus except to protect the life or health of the mother

Civil Liberties - Privacy and Abortion

• Casey v. Planned Parenthood (abortion - 1992)

    - narrowed Roe v. Wade allowing more regulation of abortion 
    - undue burden standard - pre-viability
    - states can prohibit abortion post-viability except to protect the life or health of the mother

• Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022)

    - overturned Roe v. Wade and Casey - made abortion a state issue 
    - did NOT ban abortion

• Lawrence v. Texas (2003)

    - found state sodomy laws unconstitutional 
    - based on right to privacy
    - ended legal persecution of homosexual sex

Civil Liberties - Criminal Justice

• Mapp v. Ohio (1961): exclusionary rule applies to states - evidence obtained illegally cannot be used in state court
• Gideon v. Wainwright (1963): right to counsel applies to states
• Escobedo v. Illinois (1964): right to counsel during questioning not only during trial
• Miranda v. Arizona (1966): police must inform suspects of rights before questioning

Civil Liberties - Criminal Justice

• Katz v. United States (1967): 4th Amendment protects people, not places - reasonable expectation of privacy

• Terry v. Ohio (1968) “stop and frisk” searches allowed with reasonable suspicion a subject was involved in criminal activity and is armed and dangerous

Civil Liberties - Criminal Justice Exceptions

• New York v. Quarles (1984): public safety exception to Miranda - “the gun is over there”
• Nix v. Williams (1984): inevitable discovery exception to exclusionary rule
• Illinois v. Gates (1983): totality of the circumstances test for probable cause for search warrants

Civil Liberties - Criminal Justice Exceptions

• United States v. Leon (1984): good faith exception to exclusionary rule - evidence obtained with a technically invalid warrant can be used if the police acted in good faith

• Exigent circumstances, several cases

    - hot pursuit
    - emergency aid
    - destruction of evidence (sounds heard)
    - pursuing a misdemeanor suspect is not necessarily sufficient
    - totality of the circumstances

Civil Liberties - Death Penalty

• Furman v. Georgia (1972): struck down all death penalty laws as arbitrary and discriminatorily imposed
• Gregg v. Georgia (1976): reinstated death penalty
• Atkins v. Virginia (2002): cannot execute those with intellectual disabilities
• Roper v. Simmons (2005): penalty - cannot execute minors
• Kennedy v. Louisiana (2008): cannot impose death penalty for non-homicide crimes against individuals

Civil Liberties - First Amendment Principles

• Several of these cases were wartime cases and the Court still held to strong free speech protections.

• Several of these cases involved highly offensive expression for their time and the Court held that is exactly the type of speech that needs protection.

Civil Liberties - First Amendment

• Schenck v. United States (1917): free speech - clear and present danger test
• West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943): freedom of conscience - students cannot be forced to salute the flag if it violates their conscience
• Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969): free speech - imminent lawless action test
• Tinker v. Des Moines (1969): free speech - students have free speech rights

Civil Liberties - First Amendment

“It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” - Abe Fortas for the majority in Tinker v. Des Moines

Civil Liberties - First Amendment

• Cohen v. California (1971): free speech - “F the draft” jacket. Offensive speech is protected speech

F Draft is protected speech

Civil Liberties - First Amendment

• Cohen v. California (1971): free speech - “F the draft” jacket. Offensive speech is protected speech
• Texas v. Johnson (1989): free speech - flag burning is protected speech

Civil Liberties - First Amendment and Campaigns

Supreme Court Principals

• distinction between qui pro quo (corrupt) vs ingratiation and access (legal)
• distinction between independent expenditures (legal) vs coordinated expenditures (corrupt)
• principle that money is speech (free speech) in our society of corporate media

Civil Liberties - First Amendment and Campaigns

• Buckley v. Valeo (1976) (free speech - spending money on campaigns is free speech)
• Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) (free speech - corporations have free speech rights)
• McCutcheon v. FEC (2014) (free speech - aggregate limits on individual contributions to candidates and committees unconstitutional)

Civil Rights

• Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) (denied citizenship to African Americans - major spark of the Civil War)
• Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) (separate but equal allowed - Jim Crow laws)
• Brown v. Board of Education (1954) (overturned Plessy; separate is inherently unequal)

Civil Rights - Marriage and family

• Virginia v. Loving (1967) (interracial marriage - marriage is fundamental right)
• Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) (same sex marriage)

Authorship and License

Do not submit to Quizlet, Chegg, Coursehero, or other similar commercial websites.

• Author: Tom Hanna

• Website: tomhanna.me

• License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.