5/29/13 American Government print page close window Landmark Cases (Overview) U.S. courts, and particularly the Supreme Court, frequently have to make decisions on issues about which the Constitution is silent or ambiguous. Many of the Supreme Court's decisions on such matters are regarded as landmarks with almost the same authority as the Constitution itself. The Court often proceeds incrementally, building its decisions on precedents. Judicial review An early example of a landmark is the Court's decision in 1803 in Marbury v. Madison. In a case involving the lawfulness of a presidential appointment, the Court ruled that it could not issue an order in the case because the case had improperly come to it as a case of original jurisdiction rather than on appeal. In declaring that the portion of the Judiciary Act (1789) that appeared to grant the Supreme Court authority to be the first to hear the case violated Article III of the Constitution, and was therefore unconstitutional, the Court helped establish the principle of judicial review, allowing it to void unconstitutional legislation. Although Chief Justice John Marshall argued that this principle was implicit within the U.S. Constitution, the document did not specifically state it. The Supreme Court's power to void unconstitutional state legislation might ultimately be more important than its power over congressional legislation. The Court frequently has to decide whether state laws are consistent with national powers, especially in areas related to federal control of interstate and foreign commerce. In one landmark case called Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), the Court decided that the state of New York's grant of a monopoly to a steamship company violated congressional powers over interstate commerce (Congress had granted licenses to other ships). In McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), the Court ruled that decisions by previous presidents and congresses to approve a national bank were constitutional despite the fact that the power to establish a corporation or bank was not specifically listed within the Constitution. The Court thus upheld the doctrine of implied powers and rejected the idea that the Tenth Amendment reserved such a power to the states. In this same case, it upheld national authority against the states by deciding that entrusting the state of Maryland with the right to tax the bank would violate the supremacy of federal laws. Clarifying presidential powers Although the Constitution specifies that the president appoints key officers with the "advice and consent of the Senate," it does not specify whether the president needs senatorial consent to fire them. Myers v. United States (1926) was a landmark case in which the Supreme Court decided that the president did not need such consent and that if the president were to administer the government effectively, he needed to be able to dismiss those in whom he no longer had confidence. United States v. Nixon (1974) could be regarded as another legal landmark. In this case, the Court recognized that a president had a limited right (designated executive privilege) to withhold certain documents from other branches of government, especially in cases involving military secrets. However, the Court also decided that this right did not americangovernment.abc-clio.com/Topics/Display/1184543?sid=1184543&cid=0&oid=0&view=print 1/3 5/29/13 American Government extend to occasions where presidents might be obstructing lawful investigations of possible criminal activities. Extending the Bill of Rights In Barron v. Baltimore (1833), the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the provisions of the Bill of Rights applied only to the national government. In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment subsequently subjected state governments to a number of restraints including provisions that they respect the privileges and immunities and the due process rights of U.S. citizens. In Gitlow v. United States (1925), the Court concluded that these rights included the right to free speech. Subsequently, most such provisions of the Bill of Rights have been "incorporated" into the due process clause and thus also applied to the states. One of the latest provisions to be so applied was the right to bear arms in the Second Amendment. Although provisions in the Bill of Rights are often worded in broad terms, they have to be applied to individual situations that often require judicial interpretations. The Court has thus had to decide on the limits of speech and press and on the degree to which the Constitution protects the rights of criminal defendants. Although the Fourth Amendment prohibits "unreasonable searches and seizures," it took Supreme Court decisions in Week s v. United States (1914) and Mapp v. Ohio (1961) to decide that this mandated an exclusionary rule prohibiting the use of evidence found in such illegal searches first in national and then in state proceedings. Evolving interpretations Many landmarks are important not so much because they fill in a constitutional gap but because they change previous interpretations. Thus 1954's Brown v. Board of Education reversed the decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) approving the doctrine of "separate but equal" and ruled that racial segregation did violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Power of the Supreme Court One of the most noticeable aspects of the U.S. Constitution, especially by comparison to most state constitutions, is its brevity. Such brevity implies that it intended only to present the main outlines of governmental institutions, allowing decisions to be made by the structures and forms that the Constitution set in place. The Founders generally expected that Congress would make the laws, the president would enforce them, and the courts would interpret them. Courts have special responsibility to interpret the laws because they must hear real "cases and controversies" that individuals bring to them under the Constitution. Although some scholars still advocate a view, in which each branch is thought to have equal authority to interpret the Constitution, most recognize that the executive and legislative branches have to adhere to decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court until the Court either changes its collective mind or it is reversed by constitutional amendment. For example, although he detested the decision in Scott v. Sandford (1857) that declared that blacks were not and could not be U.S. citizens, Abraham Lincoln thus recognized that the decision meant that Scott had to remain a slave unless someone bought his freedom; ultimately, the Thirteenth Amendment (1865) and Fourteenth Amendments (1868) reversed the Scott decision. Further Reading Hall, Kermit L., ed. The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. 2d ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005; Schultz, David, John R. Vile, and Michelle D. Deardorff. Institutions, Politics, and Process, Volume I of Constituitonal Law in Contemporary America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011; Vile, John R. Essential Supreme Court Decisions: Summaries of Leading Cases in U.S. Constitutional Law, 15th ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2010. Select Citation Style: MLA americangovernment.abc-clio.com/Topics/Display/1184543?sid=1184543&cid=0&oid=0&view=print 2/3 5/29/13 American Government MLA Vile, John R. "Landmark Cases (Overview)." American Government. ABC-CLIO, 2013. Web. 29 May 2013. back to top Entry ID: 1184543 americangovernment.abc-clio.com/Topics/Display/1184543?sid=1184543&cid=0&oid=0&view=print 3/3
