Every Major Supreme Court Decision — All 9 Units, Every AP Exam Argument

Chief Justice Marshall ruled that the Supreme Court had the power to review acts of Congress and declare them unconstitutional — a power not explicitly stated in the Constitution. Marshall built the argument from Article III (judicial power extends to "all cases arising under the Constitution"), the Supremacy Clause, and the oath judges take to uphold the Constitution. Critically, Marshall simultaneously established judicial review AND denied Marbury his commission — giving Jefferson a tactical win while claiming the far larger institutional power of constitutional supremacy for the Court. This is the AP's most important example of strategic jurisprudence: Marshall lost the battle to win the war.

Without Marbury, every other Supreme Court case on this page is impossible. Marbury established that the Court, not Congress or the President, is the final interpreter of the Constitution — giving the Court the authority to strike down Dred Scott (1857), uphold the New Deal (post-1937), desegregate schools (Brown, 1954), and end race-conscious admissions (SFFA, 2023). Students who understand Marbury understand that every subsequent case is an exercise of a power Marshall invented in 1803. Jefferson never accepted this power as legitimate; the constitutional crisis it represents has never fully resolved.

Holding 1 — Congress CAN create a national bank: The Necessary and Proper Clause (Art. I, Sec. 8) authorizes Congress to do whatever is "necessary and proper" to execute its enumerated powers. Marshall defined "necessary" broadly — "useful" or "conducive to" — not "absolutely indispensable." This gave Congress virtually unlimited implied powers beyond its explicit list. The bank was necessary to regulate currency and commerce; therefore constitutional.

Holding 2 — Maryland CANNOT tax the bank: "The power to tax involves the power to destroy." A state cannot tax a federal instrument because federal law is supreme under the Supremacy Clause; allowing state taxation of federal institutions would allow the states to nullify federal authority.

McCulloch is the Marshall Court's decisive victory for Hamilton over Jefferson in the constitutional debate that began in the 1790s. Jefferson had argued the Constitution gave Congress only enumerated powers; Hamilton had argued implied powers existed through the N&P Clause. Marshall adopted Hamilton's argument completely and made it constitutional law. The direct AP connection: Jefferson used strict construction to oppose the National Bank in 1790; Marshall ruled in 1819 that Hamilton was right. Jackson tried to destroy the bank anyway (Bank War, 1832) — but he couldn't undo McCulloch's constitutional holding. The holding survived; the bank didn't.

New York had granted Aaron Ogden a monopoly on steamboat navigation in New York waters. Thomas Gibbons, operating under a federal license, ran competing boats on the same routes. Marshall ruled that "commerce" in the Commerce Clause meant ALL commercial intercourse — not just buying and selling goods — and that Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce was complete and plenary, preempting state laws that interfered with it. New York's steamboat monopoly was void. The immediate practical consequence: steamboat travel exploded because interstate routes no longer required individual state licenses. The constitutional consequence: Congress had sweeping power over any commercial activity that crossed state lines.

Gibbons' broad reading of "commerce" became the constitutional basis for virtually every federal regulatory statute of the 20th century. The Sherman Antitrust Act (1890), the Pure Food and Drug Act (1906), the National Labor Relations Act (1935), the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title II, which banned discrimination in public accommodations, was justified as a regulation of interstate commerce) — all rest on the foundation Gibbons built. When the AP asks why the federal government can regulate labor relations, food safety, or civil rights in private businesses, the answer starts with Gibbons' 1824 definition of commerce as everything that crosses state lines.

New Hampshire tried to convert Dartmouth College from a private corporation (with a royal charter from 1769) into a public university by amending its charter. Marshall ruled this violated the Constitution's Contract Clause (Art. I, Sec. 10: "No State shall... pass any Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts"), because the charter was a contract between the Crown and the college's trustees that the state could not unilaterally alter. This was the first time the Contract Clause was applied to corporate charters — and it had enormous consequences for American economic development.

By protecting corporate charters under the Contract Clause, Dartmouth College made American corporations powerful and stable enough to attract large-scale investment. Investors could now trust that a state legislature could not simply dissolve or alter a corporation's charter after they had invested in it. This security for corporate charters — a form of property right — directly enabled the railroad companies, manufacturing corporations, and financial institutions that drove the Market Revolution. The case is a Unit 3/4 bridge: it is a Marshall Court constitutional decision with direct economic consequences for the Jacksonian era and beyond.

Holding 1: Dred Scott, as a Black man (enslaved or free), was not a citizen and had no standing to sue in federal court. The Court ruled that the Constitution's "citizens" referred only to those who were citizens at the time of ratification — a category that explicitly excluded Black people.

Holding 2: Living in a free state or territory did not make Scott free, because enslaved people were property, and the 5th Amendment's due process clause protected property rights — meaning Congress could not deprive slaveholders of their "property" without due process.

Holding 3: The Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional because Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery in any territory — nullifying the compromise line that had managed the slavery debate since 1820.

Chief Justice Taney intended Dred Scott to settle the slavery debate permanently by declaring that Congress lacked constitutional authority to limit slavery's spread. Instead, it destroyed every remaining compromise position: the Missouri Compromise line was gone; popular sovereignty (the idea that territorial residents could choose) was gone; Congress could not act. Republicans argued the decision pointed toward a future ruling that states also could not prohibit slavery, making the "Slave Power conspiracy" argument credible. Lincoln used this argument in the Lincoln-Douglas debates (1858). The decision made Lincoln's election (1860) and the secession it triggered both more likely — by eliminating the middle ground options that had postponed the sectional crisis.

The Civil Rights Act of 1875 had guaranteed all persons equal access to public accommodations — hotels, theaters, railroads — regardless of race. Five separate cases challenging racial exclusion from these facilities were consolidated. The Court ruled 8–1 that the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause prohibited only STATE-sponsored discrimination, not discrimination by private individuals or businesses. Because hotels, theaters, and railroads were private enterprises, the 14th Amendment did not reach them. Congress had no authority under the 14th Amendment to legislate against private racial discrimination.

Justice John Marshall Harlan (the same Harlan who dissented alone in Plessy) wrote in dissent that the 13th Amendment's prohibition of slavery extended to the "badges and incidents of servitude" — including the racial exclusion from public accommodations that the majority allowed. Harlan argued that railroads, inns, and theaters were "quasi-public" entities with special government-granted privileges that made the state action doctrine inapplicable. Congress used the Commerce Clause (not the 14th Amendment) to ban segregation in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, specifically to avoid the state action limitation the Civil Rights Cases established. The 1883 ruling forced the 1964 Congress to use a different constitutional hook.

Homer Plessy was arrested for riding in a whites-only railroad car in Louisiana. The majority ruled that the Louisiana Separate Car Act did not violate the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause because separation of races did not itself impose a "badge of inferiority" — the law was "separate but equal." The majority argument: the Constitution is "color-blind" in formal terms but cannot eliminate social distinctions; legal separation does not imply inferiority unless "the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it." This was the constitutional inversion: the amendment written to eliminate racial hierarchy in law was used to validate the legal infrastructure of racial hierarchy, as long as it was nominally symmetrical.

Justice Harlan's lone dissent contains the argument Chief Justice Warren used in Brown v. Board 58 years later: "Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens." Harlan argued that everyone knew the purpose of Louisiana's law was to humiliate and subordinate Black citizens — that the "badge of inferiority" was the entire point, not an incidental misreading. The majority's claim that Black citizens chose to feel inferior was, Harlan argued, an exercise in deliberate judicial blindness. The substance of Brown's 1954 ruling — that separate is inherently unequal — is already present in Harlan's 1896 dissent. The constitutional argument existed; the political will did not.

Warren ruled that racially segregated public schools violated the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause because "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." The psychological damage of enforced separation — stigmatizing Black children as inferior — constituted a denial of equal protection regardless of the physical equality of facilities. Warren relied partly on social science evidence (the "doll studies" by Kenneth and Mamie Clark) to establish that separation itself caused harm. Chief Justice Warren worked deliberately to achieve unanimity — he knew a divided Court would give Southern states ammunition for resistance. A 9–0 ruling made "interposition" arguments harder to sustain, though Southern states tried anyway (Southern Manifesto, 1956).

Achieved: Overturned Plessy's separate but equal doctrine; established that state-imposed racial segregation in public education violated equal protection; ended legal segregation as a constitutionally valid practice.

Did NOT accomplish immediately: Brown II (1955) required integration "with all deliberate speed" — a phrase Southern states interpreted as permission to delay. Many Southern school districts remained segregated into the 1970s. Brown addressed de jure (legal) segregation; de facto (practical) segregation in Northern cities, maintained through housing patterns and zoning, was largely untouched. The AP rewards distinguishing between what Brown declared and what it actually produced in the decade following.

The Voting Rights Act (1965) required states with histories of voting discrimination (Section 4 coverage formula) to obtain "preclearance" from the federal government before changing any election law (Section 5). Shelby County, Alabama challenged this as an unconstitutional infringement on state sovereignty. Chief Justice Roberts ruled 5–4 that the Section 4 coverage formula — based on 1965 and 1972 voting data — was unconstitutional because it was no longer rational given current conditions. Congress had reauthorized the VRA in 2006 using the same formula without updating the data. Roberts argued the "current burdens" on states must be justified by "current needs," not 40-year-old evidence. Without Section 4, Section 5 preclearance became unenforceable.

Justice Ginsburg's dissent used the "umbrella" analogy: "Throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet" — the preclearance requirement was working precisely because it prevented discriminatory laws from being enacted. Within hours of the ruling, several previously covered states enacted voter ID laws, polling place closures, and registration restrictions. Texas, North Carolina, and Alabama — all previously covered — enacted voting restrictions within days. Civil rights groups argued these laws were designed to reduce minority turnout; federal courts struck down several (North Carolina's "surgical precision" ruling) while others survived. The AP connects Shelby County directly to the debate about whether the VRA's effectiveness justified its geographic targeting of specific states.

Charles Schenck, Socialist Party general secretary, had distributed leaflets arguing that the military draft violated the 13th Amendment's prohibition on involuntary servitude and urging men to resist conscription. He was convicted under the Espionage Act (1917). Justice Holmes wrote for a unanimous Court that the First Amendment's free speech protection was not absolute: "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater." Speech that creates a "clear and present danger" of bringing about the substantive evils Congress has a right to prevent can be criminally prosecuted. In wartime, Holmes argued, speech that would be protected in peacetime may not be — the character of the act depends upon the circumstances.

Just months later, in Abrams v. United States (1919), Holmes dissented against applying his own test to convict Russian immigrants who had distributed anti-war leaflets. Holmes argued the "clear and present danger" test required an immediate, specific danger — not the speculative harm of political pamphlets. His Abrams dissent articulated the "marketplace of ideas" theory: "the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas." The AP's preferred argument: Schenck created a test Holmes himself almost immediately recognized as too permissive toward wartime repression. The "clear and present danger" test was gradually replaced by the "Brandenburg test" (1969) — a far more speech-protective standard.

Fred Korematsu, a Japanese American U.S. citizen, refused to comply with military exclusion orders requiring Japanese Americans on the West Coast to report to internment camps. The Supreme Court upheld his conviction 6–3, ruling that the wartime military necessity justified the exclusion order despite its race-based application. The majority applied what it called heightened scrutiny to racial classifications but then deferred to the military's judgment that Japanese Americans posed a security risk — effectively gutting strict scrutiny in national security contexts. This was the first case to use what would become "strict scrutiny" for racial classifications — but also the first to abandon it under military necessity pressure.

Justice Murphy's dissent called the decision a "legalization of racism" and argued the military's security justification for singling out Japanese Americans was unfounded and racially motivated. Justice Jackson warned that the ruling "lies about like a loaded weapon" ready to be used to justify any future racial discrimination wrapped in national security language. The Coram Nobis cases of the 1980s revealed that the Justice Department had suppressed evidence that military intelligence showed Japanese Americans posed no security risk — the factual premise of Korematsu was fraudulent. The Civil Liberties Act (1988) formally apologized and paid reparations. Chief Justice Roberts formally repudiated Korematsu in Trump v. Hawaii (2018) — calling it "objectively unlawful" — though in the same opinion he upheld the Muslim travel ban.

New York public schools recited a brief nondenominational prayer composed by state officials: "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our Country." Justice Black ruled 6–1 that this was unconstitutional under the First Amendment's Establishment Clause ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion"), incorporated to the states through the 14th Amendment. The Establishment Clause's purpose was precisely to prevent government-composed or government-directed religious activity — the fact that the prayer was voluntary and nondenominational did not cure the constitutional defect.

Engel produced enormous political backlash — congressional proposals to amend the Constitution to allow school prayer were introduced repeatedly through the 1980s. Reagan made school prayer restoration a Moral Majority rallying point. The political backlash against Engel is itself an AP argument: the Warren Court's Establishment Clause decisions (Engel 1962, Abington School District v. Schempp 1963) mobilized conservative evangelical Christians into political activism, contributing to the Religious Right's emergence and the Republican coalition that Reagan assembled. Removing prayer from schools was one of the specific grievances that Jerry Falwell cited in founding the Moral Majority (1979). The judicial decision helped create the political movement that shaped Unit 9's conservative realignment.

Ernesto Miranda had confessed to rape and kidnapping after two hours of police interrogation without being told he had the right to remain silent or to have an attorney present. The Warren Court ruled 5–4 that the 5th Amendment's protection against self-incrimination and the 6th Amendment's right to counsel required police to affirmatively inform suspects of these rights before custodial interrogation. The resulting "Miranda warnings" ("You have the right to remain silent; anything you say can and will be used against you...") must be given to any person in custody before interrogation or the resulting statements cannot be used as evidence.

Miranda was immediately controversial — police organizations argued it would make law enforcement impossible and allow criminals to escape justice. Nixon ran explicitly against Miranda in 1968, making it a symbol of the Warren Court's criminal justice "permissiveness." Congress passed the Crime Control Act (1968) attempting to override Miranda by statute. The Rehnquist Court upheld Miranda in Dickerson v. United States (2000), ruling it had become embedded in "national culture" and could not be overridden by statute — a rare acknowledgment that a Warren Court ruling had become too culturally established to overturn. Miranda's survival under a conservative Court is the AP's best evidence that some Warren Court precedents proved durable despite repeated conservative challenges.

Texas law criminalized abortion except to save the mother's life. Justice Blackmun ruled 7–2 that the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment protected a "right of privacy" broad enough to encompass a woman's decision to terminate a pregnancy. The right was not absolute — the state had legitimate interests in maternal health and "potential life" that grew stronger as pregnancy progressed. The trimester framework: first trimester (no state regulation), second trimester (state could regulate to protect maternal health), third trimester (state could ban abortion except to protect the mother's life). The constitutional basis was not the Constitution's text but the "penumbras" of the Bill of Rights first articulated in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) — a right to privacy implied by but not explicitly stated in the Constitution.

Roe was arguably the single most politically consequential Supreme Court decision of the 20th century for American electoral politics. The Moral Majority, founded in 1979, explicitly cited Roe as a founding grievance. Republican platforms included a constitutional amendment to overturn Roe from 1980 onward. The appointment of conservative justices to overturn Roe became the organizing principle of the Republican judicial strategy for 40 years. Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022) overruled both Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), ruling that abortion was not a constitutional right and returning the question to states. Dobbs is the most significant overruling of precedent in modern Supreme Court history — and the AP's most current example of how constitutional rights can be created and eliminated through judicial decisions.

New York limited bakery employees' working hours to 10 per day and 60 per week, citing health concerns. The Court struck down the law 5–4, ruling that the 14th Amendment's Due Process Clause protected "liberty of contract" — the right of employers and employees to negotiate their own hours free from government interference. This doctrine — sometimes called "substantive due process" or "Lochnerism" — held that economic liberty was a fundamental right that states could restrict only if the restriction was a reasonable exercise of police power. The Court ruled the bakery hours law was not a legitimate health measure but a labor regulation beyond state authority. The Lochner era (roughly 1897–1937) saw the Court strike down minimum wage, maximum hours, and labor protection statutes under this doctrine.

Justice Holmes's Lochner dissent is one of the most famous in American legal history: "The 14th Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer's Social Statics" — the Constitution does not incorporate laissez-faire economic theory. Holmes argued that a constitution must permit the experiments of social legislation even if individual justices disagreed with them. The Lochner era ended with the "switch in time that saved nine" (1937) — Justice Owen Roberts reversed his position on New Deal legislation as FDR threatened to pack the Court. West Coast Hotel v. Parrish (1937) upheld a Washington State minimum wage law for women, explicitly overruling Adkins v. Children's Hospital and effectively ending Lochnerism. The New Deal regulatory state was constitutionally validated.

After the Court had struck down key New Deal programs — including the NRA (Schechter Poultry, 1935) and AAA (United States v. Butler, 1936) — FDR threatened to add justices ("court-packing"). Jones & Laughlin Steel was the first major post-threat decision. The Court upheld the National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act, 1935) 5–4, ruling that labor relations in a steel manufacturing plant — even though manufacturing itself was not interstate commerce — had such a close and substantial connection to interstate commerce that Congress could regulate them under the Commerce Clause. This effectively reversed the Court's previously narrow reading of the Commerce Clause and ended the Lochner era's resistance to New Deal regulation.

Justice Owen Roberts, who had previously sided with the anti-New Deal majority, switched to uphold the NLRA in Jones & Laughlin. Whether Roberts switched due to FDR's court-packing threat or for independent legal reasons is disputed by historians ("the switch in time that saved nine" implies the former). The consequences: (1) The New Deal regulatory state was constitutionally validated without adding a single justice. (2) The Commerce Clause reading that Jones & Laughlin established authorized virtually unlimited federal economic regulation, lasting until Lopez (1995). (3) FDR's court-packing plan, though withdrawn after the switch, permanently established that the Court responds to political pressure — undermining its independence narrative.

During the Korean War, a steel strike threatened to halt military production. Truman ordered the seizure of steel mills by executive order, citing his war powers as commander-in-chief. The Court ruled 6–3 that Truman had exceeded his constitutional authority — the president has no inherent power to seize private property; that power must come from Congress. Congress had specifically rejected a presidential seizure provision when passing the Taft-Hartley Act (1947), meaning Congress had considered and declined to authorize exactly what Truman did. The most influential analysis came not from the majority opinion but from Justice Jackson's concurrence, which established the "Jackson tripartite framework" for analyzing presidential power.

Justice Jackson's Youngstown concurrence is one of the most cited analyses of executive power in American constitutional law:

Zone 1: President acts with express or implied congressional authorization — at maximum authority, combining executive and legislative power.
Zone 2: Congress has not acted — President operates in a "zone of twilight" with uncertain authority; outcome depends on circumstances.
Zone 3: President acts contrary to express or implied congressional will — at "lowest ebb," can only act on exclusive constitutional authority.

Truman was in Zone 3 (Congress had implicitly refused to authorize seizure in Taft-Hartley). The Jackson framework has been applied in every subsequent executive power case including the NSA surveillance cases and executive immigration orders.

Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski subpoenaed the White House tape recordings needed as evidence in the Watergate criminal trials. Nixon claimed "executive privilege" — a constitutional doctrine protecting presidential communications from disclosure — and refused to produce the tapes. The Court ruled 8–0 (Nixon's appointee, Rehnquist, recused) that executive privilege, while a legitimate constitutional doctrine, was not absolute. When the privilege was asserted against a specific, demonstrated need for evidence in a criminal proceeding, the privilege must yield. "The President is not above the law" — the unanimous ruling's essential principle. Nixon resigned 16 days after the ruling, making United States v. Nixon the most consequential judicial decision in bringing down a presidency.

The Court's 8–0 unanimity was politically critical: Nixon's four appointees (Burger, Blackmun, Powell, and Stewart) all ruled against him — there was no dissent he could characterize as partisan. Had the ruling been 5–4, Nixon might have defied it by claiming it lacked sufficient legitimacy. The unanimous ruling denied him that escape. The AP's preferred argument: United States v. Nixon is the clearest demonstration in American history that the judiciary can, when united, enforce constitutional limits even on the sitting president — reinforcing Marbury's 1803 establishment of judicial supremacy. It is also the clearest modern example of the Constitution's self-correcting mechanisms functioning as designed.

The Gun-Free School Zones Act (1990) made it a federal crime to knowingly possess a firearm in a school zone. The government argued this was a regulation of interstate commerce (guns cross state lines; school violence affects the economy). Chief Justice Rehnquist ruled 5–4 that the law exceeded Commerce Clause authority — it did not regulate a commercial activity, and its connection to interstate commerce was too attenuated. Congress must show that regulated activity "substantially affects" interstate commerce. Gun possession in a school zone was a non-economic, local criminal activity beyond Commerce Clause reach. This was the first time since 1937 that the Court struck down a federal law as exceeding Commerce Clause authority — ending 58 years of unchallenged congressional expansion.

Lopez began what the Rehnquist Court called a "federalism revolution" — reasserting constitutional limits on federal power after 58 years of deference. United States v. Morrison (2000) followed, striking down the Violence Against Women Act's civil remedy provision as beyond Commerce Clause reach. But the revolution had limits: Gonzales v. Raich (2005) upheld federal marijuana prohibition as applied to home-grown medical marijuana in California, ruling that intrastate production of a commodity affects its interstate market. The "federalism revolution" never fully rolled back Jones & Laughlin's broad Commerce Clause reading — it created a floor below which congressional regulation cannot go, not a complete restructuring.

The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold, 2002) had prohibited corporations and unions from using general treasury funds for "electioneering communications" (ads naming candidates) within 60 days of an election. Citizens United, a nonprofit, wanted to air a critical documentary about Hillary Clinton near the 2008 primary. The Court ruled 5–4 that corporations (and by extension, unions) have First Amendment speech rights, and that the government cannot restrict independent political expenditures by corporations based on their corporate identity. "If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech." The ruling effectively eliminated limits on corporate and union independent political spending.

Justice Stevens's 90-page dissent argued that corporations are not "We the People" — the Constitution was designed for human beings, and corporations' "immense aggregations of wealth" in political campaigns were exactly the kind of corrupting influence the Founders feared. Citizens United produced the "Super PAC" era: political action committees that can accept unlimited corporate and individual contributions for independent expenditures. In the 2012 election cycle, Super PACs spent over $600 million. The AP connects Citizens United to the Gilded Age parallel: Dartmouth College (1819) protected corporate charters; Citizens United (2010) gave corporations speech rights — both cases expanded corporate constitutional standing, separated by 191 years and connected by the same doctrinal logic of treating corporations as rights-bearing entities.