American Government - Chapter 4 Supreme Court Cases

Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964)

“I know it when I see it.”

• Under the First and Fourteenth amendments, criminal laws in this area [obscenity] are constitutionally limited to hard-core pornography. I shall not today attempt to further to define the kinds of materials I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it; and the motion picture involved in this case is not that

Schenk v. United States (1919)

• The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic. The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has the right to prevent

Created the Direct Incitement Test

Mapp v. Ohio (1961)

• A case involving police showing a woman (suspected of running a gambling ring) a piece of paper claiming it was a warrant, and then arresting her for pornographic materials found in her house

Gives us the exclusionary rule: the principle that illegally or unconstitutionally acquired evidence cannot be used in a criminal trial — illegal evidence is not grounds to completely dismiss charges

Engel v. Vitale (1962)

• Prayer in school, worshipping no particular God

Supreme Court found that “it is no part of the business of government to compose official prayers for any group of the American people to recite as part of a religious program carried on by any government

Miranda v. Arizona (1966)

• A combination of four cases, including an Arizona man who confessed to kidnapping and rape without knowing he could first speak to an attorney

Gives us the Miranda Warning: Ruling that requires police, when arresting subjects, to inform them of their rights, including the right to remain silent and have an attorney present during questioning

Gideon v. Wainwright (1963)

• Case involving a simple burglary where a man could not afford an attorney

• Florida law was written so as not to provide him with an attorney

This overturned his conviction and the Florida law, thus incorporating the right to an attorney into the states