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| (Melville Fuller, 7-1, 1896) The plaintiff (an octoroon) bought a first-class ticket on the East Louisiana Railway. He sat in the whites-only car in violation of an 1890 Louisiana law mandating separate accommodations. He was convicted, but appealed to the Supreme Court against the defendant, a Louisiana judge. The court upheld the law provided that "separate but equal" facilities were provided. John Marshall Harlan issued a famous dissent claiming "Our constitution is color-blind." This case was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. |
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| (John Marshall, 4-0, 1803) On his final day in office in 1801, John Adams signed commissions for 42 federal judges (the so-called "midnight judges"). His successor, Thomas Jefferson, opted to not deliver most of the commissions. One appointee, the eventual plaintiff, sued the new secretary of state, the defendant, to force the delivery of his commission. The Judiciary Act of 1789 had granted the court original jurisdiction in such cases, but the Constitution did not. The court ruled that the Judiciary Act conflicted with the Constitution and was therefore void. Therefore the defendant's request was denied for lack of jurisdiction. This case established the principle of judicial review, the power of the court to nullify unconstitutional laws. |
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| (Warren Burger, 7-2, 1973) Norma McCorvey (under an alias), a rape victim, sued a Dallas County attorney for the right to an abortion. When the case reached the Supreme Court, the plaintiff depended on the growing recognition of a "right to privacy" which began with the 1965 case of Griswold v. Connecticut. The court struck down state anti-abortion laws as "unconstitutionally vague," held that the word "person" in the Constitution "does not include the unborn," and legalized abortion in the first trimester. McCorvey later joined the pro-life movement and claimed that she was not actually raped and that she was pressured into filing the case by her ambitious attorney Sarah Weddington. |
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| Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas |
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| (Earl Warren, 9-0, 1954) The suit was filed on behalf of a third grader, who had to walk a mile to a blacks-only school when a whites-only school was much closer. Future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall argued the case for the plaintiff. The court overturned Plessy v. Ferguson and ruled that "separate but equal" facilities were not constitutional. A second case in 1955 required that desegregation proceed "with all deliberate speed" but Southern schools were notoriously slow in complying; it was not until 1970 that a majority had complied with the ruling. |
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| (John Marshall, 9-0, 1819) After the Second Bank of the United States began calling in loans owned by the states, a certain state passed a law taxing out-of-state banks. The federal bank refused to pay, so the state sued its Baltimore cashier. The court ruled that the federal government had the right to establish the bank even though it was not expressly enumerated in the Constitution and also noted that since "the power to tax was the power to destroy," that state could not tax the bank without destroying federal sovereignty. |
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| (Earl Warren, 6-2, 1962) A Tennessee citizen, sued the Tennessee secretary of state claiming that the state's electoral districts had been drawn to grossly favor one political party. The defendant argued that reapportionment issues were political, not judicial, matters, but the court disagreed and declared the issue justiciable before remanding the case to a lower court. Two years later, in Reynolds v. Sims, the court mandated the principle of "one man, one vote." |
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