AP Gov Chapter 5 Civil Liberties Court Cases

Barron v. Baltimore (1833)

Supreme Court ruled that national Bill of Rights limited only the actions of the US government, not those of the states

Gitlow v. New York (1925)

Supreme Court noted that states were not completely free to limit forms of political expression; first step toward incorporation doctrine

Near v. Minnesota (1931)

Supreme Court found that state law violated freedom of press

Palko v. Connecticut (1937)

Supreme Court decided protection from being tried twice was not a fundamental freedom

Engel v. Vitale (1962)

Supreme Court ruled that recitation in public school classrooms of a nondenominational prayer was unconstitutional

Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971)

Supreme Court made a 3-part test for laws dealing with religious establishment issues. practice was constitutional if it:

1) had a secular purpose

2) neither advanced nor inhibited religion

3) didn't foster excessive government entanglement with religion

Agostini v. Felton (1997)

Supreme Court approved of New York program that sent public school teachers into parochial schools during school hours to provide remedial education to disadvantaged students

Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002)

Supreme Court concluded that governments can give money to parents to allow them to send their children to private/religious schools

Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente União Do Vegetal (2006)

Supreme Court noted that Congress had overruled its earlier decision and legalized use of other sacramental substances

Shenck v. U.S. (1919)

Supreme Court ruled Congress had right to restrict speech "of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent"

Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969)

Supreme Court fashioned new test for deciding whether certain kinds of speech could be regulated by government (direct incitement test)

New York Times Co. v. U.S. (1971)

aka Pentagon Papers case; Supreme Court ruled that US gov couldn't block publication of secret Department of Defense documents illegally furnished to the Times by anti-war activists

Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart (1976)

any attempt by gov to prevent expression carried "'a heavy presumption' against its constitutionality"

Stromberg v. California (1931)

Supreme Court acknowledged that symbolic speech was entitled to First Amendment protection

Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969)

Supreme Court upheld right of high school students to wear black armbands to protest Vietnam War

R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul (1992)

Supreme Court made it a crime to engage in speech or action likely to arouse "anger," "alarm," or "resentment" on basis of race, color, creed, religion, or gender

New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964)

Supreme Court concluded that "actual malice" must be proved to support a finding of libel against a public figure

Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942)

Supreme Court said fighting words are not subject to the restrictions of the First Amendment

Roth v. U.S. (1957)

Supreme Court decided that the material in question had to be "utterly without redeeming social importance" and articulated new test for obscenity

Miller v. California (1973)

Supreme Court set out test that redefined obscenity

Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union (1997)

Supreme Court ruled that Communications Decency Act violated First Amendment because it was too vague and overbroad

Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition (2002)

Supreme Court ruled that Congress had gone too far in a laudable effort to stamp out child pornography

DeJonge v. Oregon (1937)

incorporated the First Amendment's freedom of assembly clause

Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)

Chief Justice Roger B. Taney listed the right to own and carry arms as a basic right of citezenship

U.S. v. Miller (1939)

Supreme Court upheld constitutionality of National Firearms Act

Quilici v. Village of Morton Grove (1983)

Supreme Court refused to review a lower court's ruling upholding the constitutionality of a local ordinance banning handguns against a Second Amendment challenge

Chandler v. Miller (1997)

Supreme Court refused to allow Georgia to require all candidates for state office to pass a urinalysis drug test thirty days before qualifying for nomination or election (law violated search and seizure clause)

Miranda v. Arizona (1966)

Supreme Court ruling that requires that individuals arrested for a crime must be advised of their right to remain silent and to have counsel present

Smith v. Massachusetts (2005)

double jeopardy applied when the trial judge ruled that the state's evidence was insufficient to maintain a prosecution but this was reversed later in the trial

Mapp v. Ohio (1961)

"all evidence obtained by searches and seizures in violation of the Constitution, is inadmissible in a state court"

Gideon v. Wainwright (1963)

ended Sixth Amendment ambiguities

Batson v. Kentucky (1986)

Supreme Court ruled that the use of peremptory challenges specifically to exclude African American jurors violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment

Maryland v. Craig (1990)

Supreme Court ruled that constitutionally the testimony of a six-year-old allege child abuse victim via one-way closed circuit television was permissible

Furman v. Georgia (1972)

Supreme Court put an end to capital punishment in short run

Gregg v. Georgia (1976)

Georgia's rewritten death penalty statute was ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court

McCleskey v. Kemp (1987)

imposition of the death penalty does not violate the equal protection clause

McCleskey v. Zant (1991)

produced new standards designed to make it much more difficult for death-row inmates to file repeated appeals

House v. Bell (2006)

Supreme Court ruled a Tennessee death-row inmate who had exhausted other federal appeals was entitled to an exception to more stringent federal appeals rules due to DNA and related evidence suggesting his innocence

Griswold v. Connecticut (1965)

involved a challenge to the constitutionality of an 1879 Connecticut law prohibiting the dissemination of information about an/or the sale of contraceptives

Roe v. Wade (1973)

Supreme Court found that a woman's right to an abortion was protected by the right to privacy that could be implied from specific guarantees found in the Bill of Rights applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment

Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989)

Supreme Court upheld state-required fetal viability tests in the second trimester, even though these tests increased the cost of an abortion considerably

Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992)

Pennsylvania could limit abortions so long as its regulations didn't pose "an undue burden" on pregnant women

Stenberg v. Carhart (2000)

Supreme Court ruled that a Nebraska partial birth abortion statute was unconstitutionally vague and therefore unenforceable, calling into question the lawd of twenty-nine other states with their own bans on late-term procedures

Lawrence v. Texas (2003)

Supreme Court overruled its decision in Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) and found the Texas law unconstitutional

Gonzales v. Oregon (2005)

Gonzales argued that Oregon's Death with Dignity Act was a violation of the federal Controlled Substances Act of 1970 and that the "Ashcroft directive" was consistent with the public interest but Supreme Court disagreed