A set of 40 important court cases in American Government that appear very often on the AP Government Exam.
Terms : Hide Images
| 133976269 | Marbury v. Madison (1803) | Established Judicial Review; "midnight judges"; John Marshall; power of the Supreme Court. | 0 | |
| 133976270 | McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) | Established national supremacy; established implied powers; use of elastic clause; state unable to tax fed. Institution; John Marshall; "the power to tax the power to destroy." | 1 | |
| 134186259 | Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) | Established a broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause; determined Congress' power encompassed virtually every form of commercial activity. | 2 | |
| 134186260 | Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) | Established "separate but equal." Gave Supreme Court approval of Jim Crow laws. | 3 | |
| 134186261 | Weeks v. U.S. (1914) | Established the "Exclusionary Rule" at the federal level; illegally obtained evidence cannot be used in court. | 4 | |
| 134186262 | Schenck v. U.S. (1919) | Clear and present danger test; shouting "fire" in a crowded theater; limits on speech, especially in wartime. | 5 | |
| 134186263 | Gitlow v. New York (1925) | Established precedent of federalizing Bill of Rights (applying them to the states); states cannot deny freedom of speech, protected through due process clause of Amendment 14. | 6 | |
| 134186264 | Near v. Minnesota (1931) | Held that the 1st Amendment protects newspaper from prior restraint. | 7 | |
| 134186265 | Palko v. Connecticut (1937) | Provided test for determining which parts of the Bill of Rights should be federalized, those which are implicitly or explicitly necessary for liberty to exist. | 8 | |
| 134186266 | Korematsu v. U.S. (1944) | Upheld as constitutional the internment of Americans with Japanese descent during WWII. | 9 | |
| 134186267 | Brown v. Board, 1st (1954) | School segregation unconstitutional; segregation psychologically damaging to blacks; overturned "separate but equal"; use of 14th Amendment. | 10 | |
| 134186268 | Brown v. Board, 2nd (1955) | Ordered schools to desegregate "with all due and deliberate speed." | 11 | |
| 134186269 | Roth v. United States (1957) | Established that "obscenity is not within the area of constitutionally protected speech or press." | 12 | |
| 134186270 | Mapp v. Ohio (1961) | Established the "Exclusionary Rule" at the state level; illegally obtained evidence cannot be used in court. | 13 | |
| 134186271 | Engel v. Vitale (1962) | Prohibited state-sponsored recitation of prayer in public schools by virtue of the 1st Amendment's establishment clause and the 14th Amendments's due process clause. | 14 | |
| 134186272 | Baker v. Carr (1962) | "one man, one vote"; ordered state legislative districts to be as near equal as possible in population; reapportionment. | 15 | |
| 134186273 | Abbington v. Schempp (1963) | Prohibited devotional Bible reading in public schools by virtue of the 1st Amendment's Establishment Clause and the 14th Amendment's Due Process Clause. | 16 | |
| 134186274 | Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) | Ordered states to provide lawyers for those unable to afford them in criminal proceedings; nationalized the 6th Amendment via the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. | 17 | |
| 134186275 | Wesberry v. Sanders (1963) | Ordered House of Representative legislative districts to be as near in population as possible. | 18 | |
| 134186276 | NY Times v. Sullivan (1964) | Requires proof of "malicious intent to harm" in order to prove libel against news organizations. | 19 | |
| 135065601 | Griswald v. Connecticut (1965) | Established right of privacy through 4th and 9th Amendments; Connecticut law banning contraceptives; set a precedent for Roe v. Wade. | 20 | |
| 135065602 | Miranda v. Arizona (1966) | Established Miranda warnings of counsel and silence; must be given before questioning suspect. | 21 | |
| 135065603 | Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971) | Established three part test to determine if Establishment Clause is violated: non-secular purpose, advances/inhibits religion, or excessive entanglement with government. | 22 | |
| 135065604 | Miller v. California (1973) | Established that community standards be used in determining whether material is obscene in terms of appealing to "prurient interest," being "patently offensive," and lacking in value. | 23 | |
| 135065605 | Roe v. Wade (1973) | Established national abortion guidelines; trimester guidelines: no state interference in 1st trimester, state may regulate to protect health of mother in 2nd trimester, state may regulate to protect health of unborn child in 3rd trimester; inferred from right to privacy established in Griswald v. Connecticut. | 24 | |
| 135065606 | U.S. v. Nixon (1974) | Allowed for executive privilege, but not in criminal cases; "Even the President is not above the law"; Watergate. | 25 | |
| 135065607 | Buckley v. Valeo (1976) | 1st Amendment protects campaign spending; legislature can limit contributions, but not how much a person spends of his/her own money on their own campaign. | 26 | |
| 135065608 | Greg v. Georgia (1976) | Upholds the constitutionality of capital punishment; death penalty does not constitute cruel & unusual punishment; overturned Furman v. Georgia. | 27 | |
| 135065609 | U.C. Regents v. Bakke (1978) | Alan Bakke and UC Davis Med School; strict quotas (affirmative action) ruled unconstitutional in this instance, but states may allow race to be taken into account as ONE of several factors in admissions decisions. | 28 | |
| 135065610 | Texas v. Johnson (1989) | Struck down a law banning the burning of the American flag on grounds that such action was symbolic speech protected by the 1st Amendment =. | 29 | |
| 135065611 | Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) | States can regulate abortion, but not with regulations that impose "undue burden" upon women; did not overturn Roe v. Wade, 1973, but gave states more leeway in regulating abortion (e.g., 24 hour waiting period, parental consent for minors). | 30 | |
| 135065612 | Shaw v. Reno (1993) | No racial gerrymandering; race cannot be the sole or predominant factor in redrawing legislative boundaries; majority-minority districts. | 31 | |
| 135065613 | U.S. v. Lopez (1995) | Gun Free School Zones Act exceeded Congress' authority to regulate interstate commerce. | 32 | |
| 135065614 | Clinton v. NY (1998) | Banned presidential use of line item veto. | 33 | |
| 135065615 | Bush v. Gore (2000) | Use of 14th Amendment's equal protection clause to stop the Florida recount in the election of 2000; example of Supreme Court dealing with a "political question". | 34 | |
| 135065616 | Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002) | Public money can be used to send disadvantaged children to religious schools in tuition voucher programs. | 35 | |
| 135065617 | Ashcroft v. ACLU (2002) | Struck down a federal ban on "virtual" child pornography. | 36 | |
| 135065618 | Lawrence v. Texas (2003) | Using right of privacy, struck down Texas law banning sodomy. | 37 | |
| 135065619 | Gratz v. Bollinger (2003) | Struck down the University of Michigan's heavy use of "bonus points" for race in undergraduate admissions. | 38 | |
| 135065620 | Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) | Allowed the use of race as a general factor in law school admissions at University of Michigan. | 39 |
