Landmark Supreme Court Cases Questions and Answers Flashcards

In Marbury v. Madison (1803), Chief Justice Marshall's assertion of judicial review was strategically crafted to avoid a direct confrontation with Jefferson's administration. Which aspect of the ruling made it politically untouchable despite establishing an enormous power for the Court?

Answer: Marshall ruled that the Court lacked jurisdiction, meaning Jefferson could not be ordered to do anything

Marshall's brilliance was in dismissing the case on jurisdictional grounds — he held that Section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 unconstitutionally expanded the Court's original jurisdiction. Because the Court ruled against itself (denying its own power to issue the writ), Jefferson had nothing to resist or defy, yet Marshall established the landmark principle that the Supreme Court could strike down acts of Congress as unconstitutional.

McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) established two major constitutional principles. A state law taxed the federally chartered Bank of the United States. The Court ruled the tax unconstitutional on the basis of which doctrine that goes beyond simply upholding the bank's existence?

Answer: The power to tax implies the power to destroy, and states cannot use taxation to impede legitimate federal operations

Marshall articulated that 'the power to tax involves the power to destroy.' Because Maryland's tax on the Bank could ultimately render it non-functional, and because the Constitution's Supremacy Clause makes federal law supreme, states cannot wield their taxing power as a weapon against constitutionally authorized federal instrumentalities. This principle extends beyond just this bank — it limits state interference with any legitimate federal operation.

In Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), Chief Justice Taney's majority opinion contained two distinct constitutional holdings, each independently devastating to Scott's claims. Which combination correctly identifies BOTH holdings?

Answer: African Americans were not citizens and therefore lacked standing to sue; Congress lacked authority to prohibit slavery in federal territories under the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause

Taney's opinion held (1) that African Americans — whether enslaved or free — were not citizens of the United States and thus had no standing to bring suit in federal court, and (2) that the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was unconstitutional because Congress could not deprive citizens of their property (enslaved persons) in federal territories without due process, invoking the Fifth Amendment. This made it one of the only cases to use the Due Process Clause to strike down a Congressional act limiting slavery.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) established the 'separate but equal' doctrine, but Justice Harlan's famous dissent anticipated the eventual overruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Which argument from Harlan's dissent most directly prefigured the reasoning used in Brown?

Answer: Separate facilities were inherently unequal because the act of legal separation itself stamped African Americans with a badge of inferiority, injuring their constitutional rights regardless of physical facility quality

Harlan argued that the enforced separation of citizens on the basis of race was itself a badge of servitude and inferiority — that the stigma of legal separation was the constitutional injury, not merely any physical disparity in facilities. This argument was essentially adopted by the Warren Court in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which held that segregated schools were inherently unequal because the separation itself generated a sense of inferiority affecting Black children's motivation to learn, citing social science evidence.

Korematsu v. United States (1944) upheld Japanese American internment, but the case is significant today partly because it was the first instance of the Supreme Court articulating and applying which standard of judicial review to racial classifications?

Answer: Strict scrutiny, which the Court named and articulated but then concluded was satisfied by the compelling interest of national security during wartime

In Korematsu, Justice Black's majority opinion explicitly stated that 'all legal restrictions which curtail the civil rights of a single racial group are immediately suspect' and 'courts must subject them to the most rigid scrutiny.' This was the Court's first formal articulation of what became known as strict scrutiny for racial classifications. Ironically, the Court then upheld the internment order by finding that the government's military necessity argument satisfied even that demanding standard — a conclusion later repudiated when Korematsu was formally overruled in Trump v. Hawaii (2018).

In New York Times Co. v. United States (1971), the Pentagon Papers case, the government sought to enjoin publication on national security grounds. The Court ruled 6-3 against prior restraint, but the decision's precedential force is limited by an unusual structural feature. What is that feature, and why does it constrain the ruling's scope?

Answer: The ruling was a per curiam opinion with each of the six majority justices writing a separate concurrence, meaning there was no single majority rationale — only a bottom-line result against prior restraint

The Court issued a brief unsigned per curiam opinion announcing only that the government had not met the 'heavy burden' required to justify prior restraint. Each of the six majority justices then wrote separately, offering different and sometimes conflicting rationales — some would allow prior restraint under extreme circumstances, others virtually never. Because there was no single majority opinion articulating a binding standard, lower courts lacked a clear rule to apply, and the case stands more as a strong presumption against prior restraint than as a defined doctrinal framework.