American National Government: Obscenity, Civil Rights, and Affirmative Action

Vocabulary flashcards covering obscenity law, race discrimination and civil rights jurisprudence, and affirmative action admissions cases from American National Government.

Hicklin rule

An early obscenity standard from the Comstock era holding that isolated passages of a work tending to corrupt minors could be suppressed, making sexual content easy to ban.

Roth rule

A 1950s obscenity standard establishing that material is obscene if the dominant theme of the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest of the average adult in the national community.

Miller v. California (1973)

The current three-prong obscenity standard: 1) appeals to prurient interest under local community standards; 2) depicts specifically defined sexual acts; and 3) lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific merit under an objective test.

First Presidential Commission on Pornography

A commission authorized by LBJ whose findings Nixon refused to release; it took a pro-pornography stance, arguing that pornography reduces sex crimes and that standards for children should not govern adult entertainment.

Meese Commission

The second Presidential Commission on Pornography; it focused on violence and concluded that exposure to violent pornography desensitizes individuals to violence, leading to increased real-world violence.

Barnes v. Glen Theatre

Supreme Court case ruling that a state can outlaw fully nude dancing and require dancers to wear pasties and a g-string or jockstrap, upholding the law as a regulation of conduct rather than speech.

American Booksellers v. Hudnut

Federal court decision striking down an Indianapolis anti-pornography ordinance based on feminist theories of sex subordination, holding that the ordinance was an unconstitutional content-based speech restriction.

New York v. Ferber

Supreme Court case holding that the government has a compelling state interest to prohibit the production, distribution, and possession of child pornography because children cannot give consent and must be protected from abuse.

Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition

Supreme Court decision establishing that the government cannot ban computer-generated images of child pornography, but can only ban material that uses actual children in its depiction.

Stanley v. Georgia

Supreme Court ruling establishing that an individual has a constitutional right protected by privacy to possess adult pornography in their own home.

Osborne v. Ohio

Supreme Court case ruling that possessing child pornography inside the home is not protected by the right to privacy because it constitutes ongoing child endangerment.

Three-Fifths Clause ($\frac{3}{5}$ rule)

A constitutional provision acknowledging racial discrimination by counting three-fifths of the enslaved population for congressional representation and taxation.

Fugitive Slave Clause

A constitutional provision establishing that an enslaved person who escapes into a free state remains legally enslaved and must be returned to their owner.

Missouri Compromise of 1820

Legislation admitting new states into the Union in pairs (one free state and one slave state) and establishing that territories north of the Mason-Dixon line would be free while those south would be slave.

Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)

Supreme Court decision holding that slaves are property rather than citizens and that Congress lacked constitutional power to ban slavery in territories, rendering the Kansas-Missouri Act unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment takings clause.

Post-Civil War Amendments

The Thirteenth Amendment (outlawed slavery), Fourteenth Amendment (granted citizenship, due process, and equal protection to former slaves in response to Dred Scott), and Fifteenth Amendment (granted voting rights to former slaves).

Compromise of 1877

Political agreement resolving the disputed 1876 presidential election by awarding Republican Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency in exchange for withdrawing federal troops from the South, ending Reconstruction.

Jim Crow Laws

Statutes enacted across the South after Reconstruction creating de jure segregation (segregation enforced by law), establishing an American system of apartheid.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

Supreme Court decision holding by an 8-1 vote that the Fourteenth Amendment equal protection clause permitted 'separate but equal' racial segregation.

Justice Harlan's Dissent in Plessy

The sole dissenting opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson asserting that equal protection requires racial integration, later serving as the legal inspiration for Brown v. Board of Education 58 years later.

Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada

Supreme Court ruling that Missouri violated the separate but equal standard by refusing to admit Black applicants to its in-state law school while offering to pay their out-of-state tuition.

McLaurin v. Oklahoma (1950)

Supreme Court case holding that admitting a Black student to a state graduate school while internally segregating him within classrooms and facilities violated equal protection.

Sweatt v. Painter (1952)

Supreme Court decision ruling that a separate, newly constructed Black law school in Texas was inherently unequal in tangible and intangible facilities to the University of Texas Law School.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954)

Unanimous (9-0) Supreme Court decision overturning Plessy v. Ferguson and holding that racially separate public schools are inherently unequal and generate feelings of inferiority that harm children's educational development.

Brown v. Board of Education II (1955)

Supreme Court decision remanding desegregation enforcement to local federal district courts to fashion desegregation remedies 'with all deliberate speed.'

Doctrine of Interposition

A legal assertion revived by southern states claiming that because individual states created the Constitution, each state has the authority to decide which federal mandates bind it.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Landmark federal law outlawing racial and other discrimination in public accommodations and employment, authorizing the federal government to intervene and initiate lawsuits directly.

Commerce Clause (Civil Rights Enforcement)

The constitutional provision used by the Supreme Court in Heart of Atlanta Motel v. U.S. and Katzenbach v. McClung to uphold the federal government's authority to outlaw private discrimination under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

DeFunis v. Odegaard

Supreme Court case challenging affirmative action at the University of Washington Law School that was dismissed as moot because the applicant had already been admitted during proceedings and was about to graduate.

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke

Supreme Court ruling striking down UC Davis Medical School's rigid 16-seat racial quota as a violation of equal protection, while establishing that race may be considered as one factor to achieve student diversity.

Gratz v. Bollinger

Supreme Court ruling holding that the University of Michigan's undergraduate admissions policy of awarding 20 out of 100 points based on minority status was not the least restrictive alternative and therefore violated equal protection.

Grutter v. Bollinger

Supreme Court decision upholding the University of Michigan Law School's holistic admissions program, ruling that considering race as an individualized factor to achieve diversity satisfied strict scrutiny.