Today’s Agenda

• Supreme Court and Landmark Cases slide show•Homework•Requiz tomorrow•Current Events

The Judicial Branch

Chapter 8The Supreme Court and Landmark Decisions

Let’s Review

• What is significant about the Marbury v Madison case• Established judicial review• What is judicial review• Power of the Supreme Court to decide if a law of congress or act of

president is constitutional and to cancel it if it’s not• What kind of court is the Supreme Court?• The highest Appellate Court (Court of Appeals)

How is a case heard by the Supreme Court?

• About 8 thousand cases are appealed to Supreme Court each year• 4 justices need to agree to

review case for it to appear on docket (schedule)• Criteria for being heard• Flagrant disregard for legal

process• Important national issue• Conflict between federal

and state courts

Describe a term of the Supreme Court.• Court works from October to

June/July• Hear cases Mon to Wed for 2

weeks• Study cases for 2 weeks• Begin process over• Each side (Lawyer) gets 30

minutes to argue their case• Often questioned and

challenged by justices• In June Court issues their

decisions of cases

How is the Court’s decision presented?• Majority opinion• Carefully written explanation of

why the majority of the justices decided a case a certain way• five of the nine justices

• Concurring opinion• Carefully written explanation of

why a certain justice(s) agreed with the majority decision but not with the reason why

• Dissenting opinion• Carefully written explanation of

why a certain justice(s) disagrees with the majority decision

"In the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. "Our constitution is colorblind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. . .The arbitrary separation of citizens on the basis of race, while they are on a public highway, is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality before the law established by the Constitution. It cannot be justified upon any legal grounds." Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan: dissenting decision of Plessy v. Ferguson

You mean justices disagree?

What it Judicial Activism?• Judicial activism term for justices

whose rulings impact the laws of society• Based their decisions of personal

viewpoints, contemporary issues• Critics

• Call it “Legislating from the bench”• actively creating new laws in its

rulings

• Supporters• say that the Constitution is a “

living document” and changes with the times

• Examples• Brown v Board of Education (1954)• Roe v Wade (1973). permitted

abortions based on a right to privacy

What is Judicial Strict Constructionism? • Term for justices who believe that

they must rule according to a narrow and strict reading of the Constitution• Supporters refer to the “original

intent” of the Framers• Supporters believe that justices

should not judge cases on their personal views or needs of today• Conservatives tend to support this

view• Critics say Framers could not

anticipate the issues of today

Important Supreme Court Cases

Discuss Gideon v. Wainwright (1963). • landmark case in which Supreme Court

unanimously ruled that courts must provide counsel (a lawyer) to defendants unable to afford it• Clarence Earl Gideon • charged with burglary for breaking into a pool hall in

Panama City, Florida• Unable to afford a lawyer• Acted as own attorney & was found guilty & sent to

prison

• While in prison he wrote to Supreme Court and appealed his guilty verdict• Said he was too poor to afford a lawyer• Warren Court ruled in his favor

Describe the Miranda v. Arizona case (1966).• Supreme Court decision that said criminal suspects

must be informed of their rights to a lawyer and to remain silent before being questioned by police • In 1963, Ernesto Arturo Miranda was arrested for

robbery, rape and kidnapping• During interrogation he confessed• During trial he claimed that he did not know of his

right to counsel or his right to remain silent• He appealed his guilty verdict to the Supreme Court • Warren Court decision said that a suspect must be

made aware of his rights to counsel and of the 5th

• Miranda himself served 11 years• Made a living autographing Miranda cards• Killed in bar fight in 1976

Miranda RightsYou have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense.

You be the judgeCan you say what you want in school? How far

does your freedom of speech go? Can a teacher search your locker, purse or schoolbag? Do

your privacy rights end when you enter school?

Tinker v. Des Moines School District• In 1965, Des Moines, Iowa residents John F. Tinker (15 years old), his siblings Mary

Beth Tinker (13 years old), Hope Tinker (11 years old), and Paul Tinker (8 years old), along with their friend Christopher Eckhardt (16 years old) decided to wear black armbands to their schools (high school for John and Christopher, junior high for Mary Beth, elementary school for Hope and Paul) in protest of the Vietnam War and supporting the Christmas Truce called for by Senator Robert F. Kennedy. The principals of the Des Moines schools learned of the plan and met on December 14 to create a policy that stated that school children wearing an armband would be asked to remove it immediately. Violating students would be suspended and allowed to return to school after agreeing to comply with the policy. The participants decided to violate this policy. Mary Beth Tinker and Christopher Eckhardt were suspended from school for wearing armbands on December 16th and John Tinker was suspended for doing the same on the following day. (The two youngest participants were not punished.) Mary Beth, Christopher, and John were suspended from school until after January 1, 1966, when their protest had been scheduled to end.

Which Amendment is at issue and how did the Supreme Court decide?

Majority opinion• The court's seven to two decision held that the First Amendment applied to public

schools, and that administrators would have to demonstrate constitutionally valid reasons for any specific regulation of speech in the classroom. The court observed, "It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."Justice Abe Fortas wrote the majority opinion, holding that the speech regulation at issue in Tinker was "based upon an urgent wish to avoid the controversy which might result from the expression, even by the silent symbol of armbands, of opposition to this Nation's part in the conflagration in Vietnam." The Court held that in order for school officials to justify censoring speech, they "must be able to show that [their] action was caused by something more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint," allowing schools to forbid conduct that would "materially and substantially interfere with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school."The Court found that the actions of the Tinkers in wearing armbands did not cause disruption and held that their activity represented constitutionally protected symbolic speech.

Dissenting Opinions• Justices Hugo Black and John M. Harlan II dissented. Black, who had long believed

that disruptive "symbolic speech" was not constitutionally protected, wrote, "While I have always believed that under the First and Fourteenth Amendments neither the State nor the Federal Government has any authority to regulate or censor the content of speech, I have never believed that any person has a right to give speeches or engage in demonstrations where he pleases and when he pleases." Black argued that the Tinkers' behavior was indeed disruptive and declared, "I repeat that if the time has come when pupils of state-supported schools, kindergartens, grammar schools, or high schools, can defy and flout orders of school officials to keep their minds on their own schoolwork, it is the beginning of a new revolutionary era of permissiveness in this country fostered by the judiciary."• Harlan dissented on the grounds that he "[found] nothing in this record which

impugns the good faith of respondents in promulgating the armband regulation."

New Jersey v. T.L.O.A teacher at a New Jersey high school discovered a student smoking cigarettes in a school bathroom, which was a violation of school rules. The teacher took the student to the principal's office. The assistant principal questioned the student, who denied she had been smoking in the bathroom. The school assistant principal then demanded to see her purse. After opening it, he found cigarettes, cigarette rolling papers that are commonly associated with the use of marijuana, a pipe, plastic bags, money, a list of students who owed her money, and two letters that contained evidence that she had been involved in marijuana dealings. As a result of this search of the student's purse and the seizure of items in it, the state brought delinquency charges against the student in New Jersey Juvenile Court. The student (identified in the case only by her initials, T.L.O.) countered with a motion to suppress the evidence found in her purse as a violation of her constitutional rights .

Which Amendment is at issue and how did the Supreme Court decide?

The Verdict of New Jersy v. T.L.O.

•Opinion of the Court The Supreme Court decided that the 4th Amendment prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures is applicable to searches conducted by public school officials, but that in this case a warrantless search o the student's purse was reasonable and permissible. Justice Byron White wrote the opinion o the Court. He said that school officials may search a student in school as long as "there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that the search will turn up evidence that the student has violated or is violating either the law or the rules of the school."

Dissenting OpinionDissent Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in the dissent:The search of a young woman's purse by a school administrator is a serious invasion of her legitimate expectations of privacy . . . . Because (the student's) conduct was neither unlawful nor significantly disruptive of school order or the educational process, the invasion of privacy associated with the forcible opening of TLO's purse was intirely unjustified at its inception . . . The rule the Court adopts today is so open-ended that it may make the Fourth Amendment virtually meaningless in the school context. Although I agree that school administrators must have broad latitude to maintain order and discipline in our classrooms, that authority is not unlimited.