251 articles
Dred Scott v. Sandford
Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) was the Supreme Court decision, 7-2 under Chief Justice Taney, holding that enslaved Black people were not U.S. citizens and that Congress could not ban slavery in federal territories; overturned by the 13th and 14th Amendments.
Earl Warren
Earl Warren (1891–1974), 14th Chief Justice of the United States (1953–1969) and three-term Republican Governor of California, led the Warren Court's rights revolution: Brown, Miranda, Baker v. Carr, Loving.
Elena Kagan
Elena Kagan (born 1960) is an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court since 2010, formerly the first woman U.S. Solicitor General and dean of Harvard Law School, known for accessible opinions and defense of precedent.
Ernesto Miranda
Ernesto Arturo Miranda, Phoenix defendant in Miranda v. Arizona (1966), whose unwarned two-hour confession led to the 5-4 Supreme Court ruling requiring Miranda warnings; retried, paroled 1972, killed 1976.
Establishment Clause
The Establishment Clause is the First Amendment provision barring laws "respecting an establishment of religion." Key cases include Engel v. Vitale (1962), Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), and Kennedy v. Bremerton (2022), which replaced the Lemon test with historical practices and understandings.
Feeder judge
Feeder judges are federal court of appeals judges from whom Supreme Court justices draw disproportionate numbers of law clerks, a small, ideologically sorted group controlling access to the Court's roughly 36 clerkships.
Felix Frankfurter
Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965), Vienna-born American jurist and Harvard professor, was an FDR-appointed Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court 1939–1962, known for judicial restraint, founding the ACLU, and clashing with the Warren Court.
Fighting words
Fighting words, from Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942), are face-to-face insulting speech outside First Amendment protection; no Supreme Court conviction upheld since 1942, narrowed by R.A.V. and Virginia v. Black.
Fred M. Vinson
Fred M. Vinson (Frederick Moore Vinson, 1890–1953), 13th Chief Justice of the United States (1946–1953), former Kentucky congressman, D.C. Circuit judge, and Truman's Treasury Secretary who led the Bretton Woods institutions and died before Brown v. Board of Education was decided.
Freedom of religion in the United States
Freedom of religion in the United States rests on the First Amendment's Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses, Article VI's religious-test ban, RFRA and RLUIPA, and evolving Supreme Court doctrine from Everson and Lemon through Kennedy v. Bremerton.
Frohwerk v. United States
Frohwerk v. United States, 249 U.S. 204 (1919), Supreme Court case upholding the Espionage Act conviction of German-language editor Jacob Frohwerk for antiwar articles, decided unanimously by Holmes alongside Schenck and Debs.
Furman v. Georgia
Furman v. Georgia was a 1972 Supreme Court decision holding that unguided jury discretion in capital sentencing violated the Eighth Amendment, halting all US executions.
Gibbons v. Ogden
Gibbons v. Ogden (22 U.S. 1, 1824), the Steamboat Case: Supreme Court decision by Chief Justice Marshall holding that Congress's Commerce Clause power covers navigation and that federal law supersedes New York's Livingston-Fulton steamboat monopoly.
Gideon v. Wainwright
Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), the unanimous Supreme Court decision holding that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel is fundamental and binds states via the Fourteenth Amendment, requiring appointed counsel for indigent defendants and overruling Betts v. Brady.
Gitlow v. New York
Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925): Supreme Court case upholding Benjamin Gitlow's criminal anarchy conviction for the Left Wing Manifesto while first applying First Amendment speech and press rights to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment.
Graham v. Connor
Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989), the Supreme Court case holding that police excessive force during arrest or stop is judged by the Fourth Amendment's objective reasonableness standard, not officer intent.
Gregg v. Georgia
Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976), the Supreme Court case (with Proffitt, Jurek, Woodson, Roberts) that upheld guided-discretion death penalty statutes and ended the post-Furman moratorium.
Griswold v. Connecticut
Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), a 7-2 Supreme Court decision finding a constitutional right to privacy in Bill of Rights penumbras, striking Connecticut's 1879 ban on contraceptive use for married couples.
Grutter v. Bollinger
Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003), Supreme Court case upholding the University of Michigan Law School's race-conscious admissions as narrowly tailored to diversity, companion to Gratz, effectively overruled by SFFA v. Harvard in 2023.
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. 557 (2006), is the Supreme Court decision invalidating the Bush-era Guantanamo military commissions for lacking congressional authorization and violating Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.
Harriet Miers
Harriet Ellan Miers, American lawyer and White House counsel under George W. Bush; first woman president of the Dallas and Texas bar associations; her 2005 Supreme Court nomination to replace O'Connor was withdrawn October 28, 2005 amid bipartisan opposition, and Alito was confirmed instead.
Harry Blackmun
Harry Andrew Blackmun (1908-1999) was a U.S. Supreme Court associate justice 1970-1994, Nixon appointee, former Mayo Clinic counsel, author of Roe v. Wade, known for his shift from conservative to liberal jurisprudence.
Harry S. Truman Supreme Court candidates
Harry S. Truman Supreme Court candidates: the four justices Truman appointed, 1945-1949, namely Harold Burton, Chief Justice Fred Vinson, Tom Clark, and Sherman Minton, all confirmed, mostly non-judicial allies.
Henry Wheaton
Henry Wheaton (1785–1848), American jurist and diplomat: third and first official Supreme Court Reporter (1816–1827), twelve volumes of Reports, lost Wheaton v. Peters (1834), Minister to Prussia, author of Elements of International Law (1836).
History of the Supreme Court of the United States
History of the US Supreme Court: from Article III and the Judiciary Act of 1789 through Marbury, Marshall, Dred Scott, the 1937 switch in time, Brown, and the modern nine-justice certiorari Court.
Hoke v. United States
Hoke v. United States, 227 U.S. 308 (1913), also styled Hoke and Economides v. United States, upheld the Mann Act (White Slave Traffic Act) under the Commerce Clause, holding Congress may bar interstate transport of women for immoral purposes while leaving prostitution itself to the states.
Homer Plessy
Homer Adolph Plessy (1863–1925), New Orleans Creole shoemaker and Comité des Citoyens activist, whose 1892 arrest on an East Louisiana Railroad whites-only car produced Plessy v. Ferguson (1896); pardoned posthumously in 2022.
Hughes Court
The Hughes Court (1930-1941) is the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, marked by New Deal battles with the Four Horsemen, the 1937 court-packing crisis, and the constitutional pivot of West Coast Hotel and Jones & Laughlin.
Hugo Black
Hugo LaFayette Black (1886-1971), Alabama senator and FDR's first Supreme Court appointee (1937), ex-Klansman, total-incorporation advocate, First Amendment absolutist, author of Korematsu, Everson, Engel, Gideon, and Wesberry opinions.
Hylton v. United States
Hylton v. United States, 3 U.S. 171 (1796), the first Supreme Court ruling on direct taxes, upheld the 1794 carriage tax as an indirect excise, limiting direct taxes to capitation and land taxes, and prefigured judicial review before Marbury.