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Marbury v. Madison
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McCulloch v. Maryland
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Dredd Scott v. Sandford
The origins of the Dredd Scott case come from a slave and his owner when they traveled to a state where slavery was banned, Dredd Scott, the slave, then proceded to sue his owner, Sanford, for his freedom. This case was important because it declared that blacks, free or enslaved, could not become U.S citizens, and therefore could not sue people in federal court. This case is consistently thought of as one of the worst decisions the supreme court has ever made. -
U.S v. E.C Knight Company
This case is incredibly important because it greatly limited the power of the federal government to control monopolies. The way it did this was by effectively nullifying what was meant to be the act to end monopolies, the Sherman Anti-Trust act. This was done by the Supreme Court overanalyzing the fine print and deciding that the act could not limit manufacturing monopolies; they were an issue to be decided by state legislatures. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson was a case between Homer Plessy, an African American, and judge Howard Ferguson, which decided the federal stance on segregation. This stance was that segregation was not unconstitutional as long as the followed the guidelines of separate but equal. This ruling was then used as the basis for more segregation laws in that basically caused the leaps and bounds that had been taken towards equality during reconstruction to be erased. -
Lochner v. New York
The fact that the argument that the government should help to protect people from excessive working hours and that they should regulate the workweek was tossed out of court caused the dawning of a new era. An era where there were no regulations on how long a person could be made to work, or how long the work week was. This time was aptly the lochner era due to the fact that there was little to no control over how long a person would be working, without any added incentive like overtime. -
Muller v. Oregon
The Muller v. Oregon decision was incredibly important because not only did it show the beginning of the use of labor laws, but it also justified sexual discrimination. The way it did this was that it upheld restrictions on working hours only for women in Oregon, so as to protect their health. The specifics of this ruling were that in Oregon women were only allowed to work 10 hours a day. This case was then used as precedent to argue that there should be separate legislation for women. -
Schneck v. United States
This ruling enforced the espionage act by stating that if a person was encouraging people of drafting age to skip the draft, they could be tried for trying to obstruct the draft, which was a criminal offence. This ruling stated that even though people have the right to free speech, they did not have the right to use it in this case, because it was encouraging people to commit the crime of skipping the draft. -
Adkins v. Children's Hospital
This case overturned the case of Muller v. Oregon on the basis that since women had been given the right to vote since the ruling, the argument that women were inferior no longer held water. This case also stated that there should be no separation between the minimum wage between women and men, as they were given the right to equal pay in the 5th amendment. -
Korematsu v. U.S
This case dealt with the internment of americans of japanese descent in camps. Fred Korematsu argued that there was no reason for the japanese americans to be put in camps, while the opposition argued that it was necessary to protect american interests during the war. In the end the Supreme Court upheld the governments decision to create the internment camps. This ruling is important because it was the first time that the court ruled in favor of the government in a case involving strict scrutiny -
Dennis v U.S
This case dealt with the members of the communist party in the U.S wanting to overthrow the government. This case is important because it set down restrictions on peoples first amendment rights. They court decided that people do not have the right to free speech and assembly if it is in a plot to overthrow the government or to cause some other harm to the people. Out of this case SCOTUS came up with the Clear and Probable Danger Test. -
Brown v Board of Education
This case is was and is hugely important to the pursuit of equal rights for peple regardless of gender. The court used this case to overturn the ruling of the case Plessy v Ferguson which allowed state sponsored segregation provided both facilities were the same. The court unanimously ruled that this went against the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. The only issue was that the court did not lay out a method desegregate races.
