Founding Documents and Landmark Supreme Court Cases Flashcards

In Marbury v. Madison (1803), Chief Justice Marshall's assertion of judicial review rested on which foundational reasoning?

Answer: The Constitution is supreme law, and it is emphatically the province of the judicial department to say what the law is

Marshall grounded judicial review in the Supremacy Clause and the nature of a written constitution: if the Constitution is supreme law and courts must resolve legal conflicts, then a court confronted with a statute that contradicts the Constitution must apply the Constitution and void the statute. The quote 'it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is' encapsulates this logic. The other options misstate the ruling's actual reasoning.

The Third Amendment's prohibition on quartering soldiers 'without the consent of the owner' during peacetime was explicitly cited as a source of constitutional penumbras in which landmark Supreme Court case?

Answer: Griswold v. Connecticut (1965)

In Griswold v. Connecticut, Justice Douglas's majority opinion held that specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights — including the Third Amendment's quartering prohibition, the Fourth Amendment's search protections, and others — have penumbras formed by emanations that help give them life. These penumbras collectively create a zone of privacy that the Connecticut contraceptive ban violated. The Third Amendment is rarely litigated but was explicitly named in this privacy-rights framework.

Which provision of the original unamended Constitution directly addressed the issue of enslaved persons for purposes of congressional apportionment without using the word 'slavery'?

Answer: Article I, Section 2 — the Three-Fifths Clause

Article I, Section 2 stipulated that representatives and direct taxes would be apportioned by adding 'three fifths of all other Persons' (a euphemism for enslaved people) to the count of free persons. The Migration or Importation Clause (Art. I, §9) prevented Congress from banning the slave trade before 1808. The Fugitive Slave Clause (Art. IV, §2) required return of escaped persons. Only the Three-Fifths Clause directly affected congressional apportionment.

McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) established that Maryland could not tax the Second Bank of the United States. Which constitutional principle did Marshall invoke to reach this conclusion, beyond the Necessary and Proper Clause?

Answer: The Supremacy Clause means that a state's power to tax an instrument of federal government is a power to destroy it

After using the Necessary and Proper Clause to establish Congress's power to charter the bank, Marshall addressed the tax question using the Supremacy Clause. His famous aphorism — 'the power to tax involves the power to destroy' — rested on the idea that states cannot, under the Supremacy Clause, use their taxing power to undermine a constitutionally valid federal instrument. The Commerce Clause and Contract Clause played no role in the opinion.

The Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause was originally interpreted to permit 'separate but equal' facilities in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Which dissenting justice argued in Plessy that the Constitution is 'color-blind'?

Answer: John Marshall Harlan

Justice John Marshall Harlan authored the sole dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, writing that 'our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.' Harlan, a former slaveholder from Kentucky, argued that the majority's 'separate but equal' doctrine was inconsistent with the civil and political equality the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments were designed to achieve. His dissent became foundational precedent when Brown v. Board of Education overruled Plessy in 1954.

Which of the following best describes why the Ninth Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights, according to James Madison's arguments during its drafting?

Answer: To prevent Congress from using the enumeration of rights as a pretext to restrict rights not listed

Madison feared that listing specific rights might imply that unlisted rights did not exist — a 'negative pregnant' argument giving the federal government power to deny anything not enumerated. The Ninth Amendment was drafted to foreclose this reasoning by declaring that the enumeration of certain rights 'shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.' It is a rule of constitutional construction, not a grant of power to Congress or the states.