Landmark Supreme Court Cases Practice Quiz #1

In Marbury v. Madison Chief Justice John Marshall cleverly established the power of the Supreme Court to

invalidate federal laws held to be in conflict with the Constitution

This Supreme Court case ruled on March 3, 1919, that the freedom of speech protection afforded in the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment could be restricted if the words spoken or printed represented to society a "clear and present danger."

Schenck v US

A person is arrested for burglary.  The police question him for hours, which results in a confession.  The police did not inform him he could have an attorney present during questioning.

Which Supreme Court case could make his confession be excluded from evidence in court?

Gideon v Wainwright

Which of the following cases resulted in a decision that undermined civil rights and liberties in prioritization of national security?

Korematsu v United States

Use the passage below, from a landmark Supreme Court case opinion, to answer the question that follows.

"So if a law be in opposition to the constitution; if both the law and the constitution apply to a particular case, so that the court must either decide that case conformably to the law, disregarding the constitution; or conformably to the constitution, disregarding the law; the court must determine which of these conflicting rules governs the case."

Which Supreme Court case established the precedent described in the opinion?

Marbury v Madison

Which Supreme Court decision stated that blacks were not citizens of the nation and ruled that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional as it limited the property rights of slaveholders.

Dred Scot v Sandford

The US Supreme Court enabled which government practices to continue in its ruling in Plessy v Ferguson?

segregating public facilities

In order to attract investment and business and reduce expenses, a state legislature proposes passing a law that removes the need for certain federal regulatory features relating to office and factory environments.

Which legislative action would most likely cause the US Supreme Court to decide that this violated the Supremacy Clause?

Occupational Safety and Health Act

In McCulloch v Maryland the United States Supreme Court upheld the charter granted to the Untied States Bank based upon which of the following powers?

Congress’s right to collect taxes and regulate commerce

Gibbons v Ogden explores which of the following concepts

Federalism, national supremacy and the commerce clause,

Mapp v Ohio addressed which constitutional amendment?

4th amendment

This Supreme Court decision declared that all evidence obtained by searches and seizures in violation of the Fourth Amendment is inadmissible in a state court. 

Mapp v Ohio

Statements that a defendant in custody makes during an interrogation are admissible as evidence at a criminal trial only if law enforcement told the defendant of the right to remain silent and the right to speak with an attorney before the interrogation started, and the rights were either exercised or waived in a knowing, voluntary, and intelligent manner.   This is addressed in which Supreme Court decision?

Miranda v Arizona

This case is sometimes referred to as the Pentagon Papers case.

New York Times v United States

The New York Times v United States case

defended the First Amendment right of free press against prior restraint by the government

In which Supreme Court case was a Florida Supreme Court order for a selective manual recount of that state's U.S. presidential election ballots in 2000 was reversed. 

Bush v Gore

John Brown was arrested and charged with shoplifting.  He was homeless but he wanted to take his case to trial.  He requested a public defender because he could not afford a private attorney and he felt it was constitutional right for an attorney regardless of his ability to pay.   Which of the following Supreme Court cases addresses this issue?

Gideon v Wainwright

The Supreme Court ruled  in this case that Congress had exceeded its constitutional authority under the Commerce Clause when it passed a law prohibiting gun possession in local school zones.

US v Lopez

What question was addressed in United States v Nixon?

Is the President's right to safeguard certain information, using his "executive privilege" confidentiality power, entirely immune from judicial review?

In which case did the Supreme Court reason in 1857 that, at the time of the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, persons of African descent were brought to the U.S. as property, and, whether later freed or not, could not become U.S. citizens.

Dred Scott v Sanford

"Citizenship has its responsibilities as well as its privileges, and in time of war the burden is always heavier. Compulsory exclusion of large groups of citizens from their homes, except under circumstances of direst emergency and peril, is inconsistent with our basic governmental institutions. But when under conditions of modern warfare our shores are threatened by hostile forces, the power to protect must be commensurate with the threatened danger."  This quote references which Supreme Court case?

Koremastu v United States

What was the main question asked in the Brown v Board of Education decision?

Does the segregation of public education based solely on race violate the Equal Protection Clause of the fourteenth amendment

Did the University of California violate the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, by practicing which policy that resulted in the repeated rejection of Bakke's application for admission to its medical school?

Affirmative action