1.1. Background: Fletcher bought a tract of land from Peck while the 1795 act was still in force, not knowing about the bribe scandal behind it. Fletcher then sued Peck claiming that Peck had not had clear title to the land when he sold it.
1.2. Significance: The first case in which the Supreme Court ruled a state law unconstitutional. It also hinted that Native Americans did not hold title to their own lands.
2. U.S. v. E.C. Knight and Co.
2.1. Background: In 1892, the American Sugar Refining Company gained control of the E.C. Knight Co. and others which resulted in a 98% monopoly in the sugar industry. President Cleveland directed the national government to sue the Knight Company under the provisions of the Sherman Antitrust Act to prevent the aquisition.
2.2. Significance: The court's decision was 8-1 went against the government. Justice John Marshall Harlan dissented. The ruling prevailed until the end of the 1930s, when the court took a different position on the national government's power to regulate the economy.
3. McCulloch v. Maryland
3.1. Background: The state of Maryland had attempted to impede operation of a branch of the Second Bank of the United States by imposing a tax on all notes of banks not chartered in Maryland. The Court determined that Congress did have the power to create the Bank.
3.2. Significance:This case established two important principles in constitutional law. First, state action may not impede valid constitutional exercises of power by the Federal government. Second,the Constitution grants to Congress implied powers for implementing the Constitution's express powers, in order to create a functional national government.
4. Gibbons v. Ogden
4.1. Background: the power to regulate interstate commerce was granted to Congress by the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution. Exiled Irish patriot Thomas Addis Emmet and Thomas J. Oakley argued for Ogden, while William Wirt and Daniel Webster argued for Gibbons.
4.2. Significance: This marked the start of a 40-year period of history during which the Supreme Court limited the federal government's ability to regulate under the Interstate Commerce Clause. During the 1930s the Supreme Court changed course again and began to grant more federal authority under Commerce Clause, going beyond even the authority recognized in Gibbons v. Odgen.
5. Debs v. United States
5.1. Background: Debs was an American labor and protest leader. In 1918, Debs made an anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio protesting US involvement in WWI.
5.2. Significance: The Court had reviewed several statements that Deb had said regarding the war. While he had tempered his speeches in an attempt to comply with the Espionage Act, the Court found he had shown the "intention and effect of obstructing the draft and recruitment for the war." The Supreme Court decided against Debs, and maintained the power of the Espionage Act. Debs' sentence to ten years imprisonment and loss of citizenship was upheld.
6. Dred Scott v. Sandford
6.1. Background:the Court held that African Americans, whether slave or free, could not be American citizens and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court,and that the federal government had no power to regulate slavery in the federal territories acquired after the creation of the United States. Dred Scott, an African American slave, attempted to sue for his freedom.
6.2. Significance:In a 7–2 decision written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, the Court denied Scott's request. For only the second time in its history the Supreme Court ruled an Act of Congress to be unconstitutional. The decision would prove to be an indirect catalyst for the American Civil War.It is now widely regarded by scholars as the worst decision ever made by the Supreme Court.
7. Lochner vs. New York
7.1. Background: United States Supreme Court case that held that "liberty of contract" was implicit in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The case involved a New York law that limited the number of hours that a baker could work each day to ten, and limited the number of hours that a baker could work each week to 60.
7.2. Significance: Lochner is one of the most controversial decisions in the Supreme Court's history, giving its name to what is known as the Lochner era. In the Lochner era, the Supreme Court issued several controversial decisions invalidating federal and state statutes that sought to regulate working conditions during the Progressive Era and the Great Depression.
8. Marbury v. Madison
8.1. Background: Marbury petitioned the Supreme Court to force the new Secretary of State James Madison to deliver the documents. The Court found firstly that Madison's refusal to deliver the commission was both illegal and remediable.
8.2. Significance: This was unconstitutional because Marbury had rights through the Judiciary Act of 1798 to bring his claim to the supreme court. Marbury's petition was denied.
9. Brown v. Board of Education
9.1. Background: In 1951, a class action suit was filed against a school in Topeka, Kansas. The suit called for the school district to reverse its policy of racial segregation. They had elementary schools which were separated by blacks and whites, even though this wasn't required.
9.2. Significance: This was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case where the Court declared having separate schools for both blacks and whites unconstitutional. Racial segregation was ruled a violation of the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
10. Dartmouth College v. Woodward
10.1. Background: Woodward, the secretary to the board started adding new members to the board of trustees, and creating a state board of visitors with veto power over trustee decisions. This effectively converted the school from a private to a public institution. The College's book of records, corporate seal, and other corporate property were removed.
10.2. Significance: The decision, handed down on February 2, 1819, ruled in favor of the College and invalidated the act of the New Hampshire Legislature, which in turn allowed Dartmouth to continue as a private institution and take back its buildings, seal, and charter.
11. Roe vs. Wade
11.1. Background: In 1973 this case delt with a landmark decision by the U.S Supreme court on the issue of abortion. Decided simultaneously with a companion case, Doe v. Bolton, the Court ruled 7–2 that a right to privacy under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment extended to a woman's decision to have an abortion, but that right must be balanced against the state's two legitimate interests in regulating abortions: protecting prenatal life and protecting women's health.
11.2. Significance: In disallowing many state and federal restrictions on abortion in the United States, Roe v. Wade prompted a national debate that continues today about issues including whether, and to what extent, abortion should be legal, who should decide the legality of abortion, what methods the Supreme Court should use in constitutional adjudication, and what the role should be of religious and moral views in the political sphere. Roe v. Wade reshaped national politics, dividing much of the United States into pro-choice and pro-life camps, while activating grassroots movements on both sides.
12. Schenck v. United States
12.1. Background: United States Supreme Court decision concerning enforcement of the Espionage Act of 1917 during World War I. A unanimous Supreme Court, in a famous opinion by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., concluded that defendants who distributed leaflets to draft-age men, urging resistance to induction, could be convicted of an attempt to obstruct the draft, a criminal offense.
12.2. Significance: The decision from this case set the standard, and was then used to uphold a series of convictions arising out of prosecutions during war time.
13. Plessy v. Ferguson
13.1. Background: decision in the jurisprudence of the United States, upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities under the doctrine of "separate but equal"
13.2. Significance: The decision was handed down by a vote of 7 to 1 with the majority opinion written by Justice Henry Billings Brown and the dissent written by Justice John Marshall Harlan. "Separate but equal" remained standard doctrine in U.S. law until its repudiation in the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education.
14. Schechter Poultry Corporation v. United States
14.1. Background: Decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that invalidated regulations of the poultry industry according to the nondelegation doctrine and as an invalid use of Congress' power under the commerce clause. This was a unanimous decision that rendered the National Industrial Recovery Act, a main component of President Roosevelt's New Deal, unconstitutional.
14.2. Significance: After the decision was announced, newspapers reported that 500 cases of NIRA code violations were going to be dropped.
