Civil Liberties

First Amendment

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

Eighth Amendment

"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imkposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."

Fourteenth Amendment

"No state shall...deprive any person's life, liberty, or property, without due process of law" --Added in 1868

DeJonge v. Oregon (1937)

"Peaceful assembly for lawful discussion cannot be made a crime." Incorporated the First Amendment's freedom of assembly clause to apply to the states. If the words or actions taken at nay even cross the line of constitutionality, the event itself amy no longer be protected by the Constitution. Absent that protection, leaders and attendees may be subject to governmental regulation and even criminal arrest, incarceration, or civil fines.

Ninth Amendment

"The enumeration of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

Fourth Amendment

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the personsor things to be seized."

English Common-Law Test of 1868

"Whether the tendency of the matter charged as obscenity is to deprive and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immpral influences and into whose hands a publication ofthis sort might fall."

Self-Incrimination and Double Jeopardy Cases

1936- the Supreme Court ruled that convictions for murder based solely on confessions given after physical beatings were unconstitutional. Miranda v. Arizona (1966)

Searches and Seizures Cases - Drugs

1986- President Ronald Reagan signed an executive order requiring many executive branch employees to undergo drug tests. 1997- Congress passed a law authorizing random drug searches of all congressional employees. 1989- the Supreme Court ruled that mandatory drug and alcohol testing of employees involved in accidents was constitutional. 1995- the Court upheld the constitutionality of random drug testing of public high school athletes. 2002- the Court upheld the constitutionality of a Tecumseh, Oklahoma, policy that required mandatory drug testing of high school students participating in any extracurricular activities. 2001- the Court ruled that complusory testing of women for cocaine uase and reporting positive results to law enforcement officials to generate evidence for law enforecment officials and not to give medical treatment to the women was unconstitiutional.

Free Exercise Clause Cases

1993- the Court ruled that members of the Santeria Church, had the right to sacrifice animals during religious services. 1990- the Court ruled that the free exercise clause allowed Oregon to ban the use of sacramental peyote (an illegal hallucinogenic drug) in some Native American tribes' traditional religious services. 2006- the Court found the use of hoasca tea, well-known for its hallucinogenic properties, was permissible free exercise of religion for members of a Brazilian-ased church. The court noted that Congress had overruled its earlier decision and specifically legalized the use of other sacramental substances including peyote. 1965- the Court ruled that belief in a supreme being was not essential for recognition as a conscientious objector.

Establishment Clause Cases

1993- the Court ruled that religious groups must be allowed to use public schools after hours if that access is also givent to other community groups. 2000- the Court ruled that student-led, student-initiated prayer at high school football games violated the establishemnt clause. 2002- the Court concluded that governemtns can give money to parents to allow them to send their children to private or religious schools.

Searches and Seizures Cases

1995- the Court ruled that police must knock and announce their presence before entering a house or apartment to execute a search. 2006- the Court ruled that even if police refused to knock, evidence improperly seized could be used in cases where police had a valid warrant. 1989- the Court ruled that there need be only a "reasonable suspicion" for stopping a suspect--a much lower standard than probable cause. 2006- the Court ruled that police could not conduct a warrantless search of a home if one of the occupants objected. 2001- Supreme Court decision ruled that drug evidence obtained by using a thermal imager (without a warrant) on a public street to locate the defendant's marijuana hothouse was obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment. 2002- an unusually unanimous Court ruled that when evaluating if a border patrol officer acted lawfully in stopping a suspicious minivan, the totality of the circumstances had to be considered.

Cruel and Unsual Punishment Cases

2002- the Court ruled that mentally retarded convicts could not be executed. 1987- the Court ruled that imposition of the death penaltuy did not violate the equal protection clause, even when it appeared to discriminate against African Americans. It noted that even if statistics show clear discrimination, there must be a showing of racial discrimination in the case at hand.

D.C. v. Heller

2nd amendment right of individuals to possess firearm. Acknowledged the problems that hand gun violence poses in American cities, but declared the District of Columbia's ban on handgun ownership was unconstitutional.

Miranda v. Arizona (1966)

A landmark Supreme Court ruling that held the Fifth Amendment requires that individuals arrested for a crime must be advised of their right to remain silent and to have counsel present.

Bill of Attainder

A legislative act that inflicts punishment on individuals without any kind of judicial action. Prohibited by the Constitution.

Lemon Test

A practice or policy was constitutional if it: (1) had a secular purpose; (2) neither advanced no r inhibited religion; and, (3) did not foster an excessive government entanglement with religion.

U.S. v. Miller (1939)

A unanimous Court uphend the constitutionality of the National Firearms Act, stating that the Second Amendment was intended to protect a citizen's right to own ordinary militia weapons and not sawed-off shotguns.

Second Amendment

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

New York Times Co. v. U.S. (1971)

Also called the Pentagon Papers case. The Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. government could not block the publication of secret Department of Defense documents illegally furnished to the Times by anti-war activists.

New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964)

An Alabama state court found the Times guilty of libel for printing a full-page advertisement accousing Alabama officials of physically abusing African Americans during various civil rights protests. The Supreme Court overturned the conviction and concluded that "actual malice" must be proved to support a finding of libel against a public figure.

Equal Access Act (1984)

Bars public schools from discriminating groups of students on the basis of religious, political, philosophical or other content of the speech at such meetings. This law's constitionality was upheld in 1990

Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)

Chief Justice Roger B. Taney listed the right to own and carry arms as a basic right of citizenship.

Miller v. California (1973)

Concluded that lower courts much ask "whether the work depicts or describes, in a patentlly offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by state law." The courts also were to determine "whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."

Prior Restraint

Constitional doctrine that prevents the governemtn from prohibiting speech or publication before the fact; generally held to be in violation of the First Amendment.

Due Process Clause

Contained in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Rights ranging from economic liberty to criminal procedural rights to protection from arbitrary govermental action.

Writs of Habeas Corpus

Court orders in which a judge requires authorities to prove that a prisoner is being held lawfully and that allows the prisoner to be freed if the judge is not persuaded by the government's case. Also imply that prisoners have a right to know what charges are being made against them.

U.S. v. Williams

Decided that the Protect Act, which outlawed the priniting of material believed to be child pornography, was not overly broad and did not abridge the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment.

Libel

False written statement or a written statement tending to call someone's reputation into disrepute.

Near v. Minnesota (1931)

First case in which by the Supreme Court found that a state law violated freedom of the press as protected by the First Amendment. Ruled that "The fact taht liberty of the press may be abused by miscreant purveyors of scandal does not make any the less necessary the immunity of the press from previous restraint."

Establishment Clause

First clause of the First Amendment. Prohibits the national government from establishing a national religion.

Ex Post Facto Law

From the Latin for "after the fact," a law that applies to actions acommitted before the law that applies to actions committed before the law was passed. Prohibited by the Constitution.

Gregg v. Georgia (1976)

Georgia's rewritten death penalty statute was ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court.

The Sixth Amendment and the Right to Counsel Cases

Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) 2008- the Court ruled that the right to counsel began at the accused'd first appearance before a judge. 2005- the Supreme Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment's guarantees required lawyers to take reasonable steps to prepare for their clients' trial and sentencing, including examining their prior criminal history.

Civil Rights

Government-protected rights of individuals against arbitrary or discriminatory treatment.

Incorporation Doctrine

Holds that the Due Process Clause ofthe Fourteenth Amendment requires that state and local governments also guarantee those rights.

Brady Bill of 1993

Imposed a federal mandatory fave-day waiting period onthe purchase of handguns.

Fifth Amendment

Imposes a number of restrictions on the federal government with respect to the rights of persons suspected of committing a crime. It provides for indictment by a grand jury and protection against self-incrimination, and prevents the national government from denying a person life, liberty, or property without the due process of law. It also prevents the national government from taking property without just compensation.

Fighting Words Cases

In 1968, Paul Cohen wore a jacket that said "F--- the Draft. Stop the War" into a Los Angeles county courthouse. He was arested and charged with disturbing the peace and engaging in offensive conduct, which the police feared would incite others to act violently toward Cohen.The trial court convicted Cohen, and this conviction was upheld by a state appellate court. However, when the case reached the Supreme Court in 1971, the Court reversed the lower courts' decisionand ruled that forbidding the use of certain words amounted to little more than censorship of ideas.

Griswold v. Connecticut (1965)

Involved a challenge ot the constitutionality of an 1879 Connecticut law prohibiting the dissemination of information about and/or the sale of contraceptives.

Substantive Due Process

Judicial interpretation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments' Due Process Clauses that protects citizens from arbitrary or unjust laws. States had to prove their laws were a valid exercise of their power to regulate the health, welfare, or public morals of their citizens.

Exclusionary Rule

Judicially created rule that prohibits police from using illegally seized evidence at trial.

Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992)

Justices wrote that Pennsylvania could limit abortions so long as its regulations did not pose "an undue burden" on pregnant women. The Court upheld a 24 hr waiting period and parental consent requirements.

USA Patriot Act 2001

Law passed by Congress making it easier for the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to secret collect information about suspected terrorists

Prior Restraint Cases

NY Times Co v. U.S. (1971) Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart (1976) 2005- the Court ruled that a judge's injection banning all futures comments made by client against his attorney. The Court found that in light of the attorney's death, he had diminished need for protection. Thus the prohibition was an overly broad exercise of prior restraint.

R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul (1992)

Ordinance that made it a crime to engage in speech or action likely to arouse "anger," "alarm," or "resentment" on the basis of race, color, creed, religion, or gender was at issue. The Court ruled that a white teenager who burned a cross on a black family's front lawn, thereby committing a hate crime under the ordinance, could not be charged under that law because the First Amendment prevents governments from "silencing speech on the basis of content."

Double Jeopardy Clause

Part of the Fifth Amendment that protects individuals from being tried twice for the same offense.

National Firearms Act of 1934

Passed by Congress in response to the increase in organized crime that occurred in the 1920s and 1930s as a result of Prohibition. The act imposed taxes on automatic weapons and sawed-off shotguns.

Selective Incorporation

Process used by the Court to limit the rights of states by protecting against abridgement of fundamental freedoms. Most, but not all of the protections found in the Bill of Rights are made applicable to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment. Requires the states to respect freedoms of press, speech, and assembly, among other rights.

McClesky v. Zant

Produced new standards designed to make it much more difficult for death-row inmates to file repeated appeals.

Sixth Amendment, Article III

Provides that a person accused of a crime shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury--that is, a trial in which a group of the accused's peers act as a fact-finding, deliberative body to determine guilt or innocence. It also provides defendants the right to confront wintesses against them.

Hate Speech, Unpopular Speech, and Speech Zones Cases

R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul (1992) 2003- the Court ruled that state governemtns could constitutionally restrict cross burning when it occurred with the intent of racial intimidation.

Palko v. Connecticut (1937)

Rationale for selective incorporation. The Supreme Court upheld Palko's second conviction and the death sentencce. They chose not to bind states to the fifth Amendment's double jeopardy clause and conducted that protection from being tried twice was not a fundamental freedom.

Tenth Amendment

Reiterates that powers not delegated to the national governmnet are reserved to the states or to the people.

Fundamental Freedoms

Rights defined by the Court to be essential to order, liberty, and justice, and therefore entitled to the highest standard of review, strict scrutiny.

Miranda Rights

Satements that must be made by the police informing a suspect of his or her constitutional rights protected by the Fifth Amendment, including the right to an attorney provided by the court if the suspect cannot afford one.

Free Exercise Clause

Second clause of the First Amendment. Guarantees citizens that the national government will not interfere with their practice of religion. This guarantee is not absolute.

Sixth Amendment

Sets out the basic requirements of procedural due process for federal courts to follow in criminal trials. These include speedy and public trials, impartial juries, trials in the state where crime was committed, notice ofthe charges, the right to confront and obtain favorable witnesses, and the right to counsel.

Ban on Assault weapons 1994

Signed by Pres. Bill clinton. Prohibited Americans from owning many ofthe most powerful types of guns, carried a ten-year time limit. Experied just before the 2004 presidental and congressional elections. Neither Pres. George W. Bush nor the Republican-controlled Congress made any serious efforts to renew it.

Symbolic Speech Cases

Stromberg v. California (1931) Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969)

Gitlow v. New York (1925)

Supreme Court noted that the states were not completely free to limit forms of political expression.

Symbolic Speech

Symbols, signs, and other methods of expression generally also considered to be protected by the First Amendment.

Direct Incitement Test

Test articulated by the Supreme Court in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) that holds that advocacy of illegal action is protected by the First Amendment unless imminent lawless action is intended and likely to occur.

Clear and Present Danger Test

Test articulated by the Supreme Court in Schenck v. U.S. (1919) to draw the line between protected and unprotected speech; the Court looksto see "wheter the words used" could "create a clear and present danger that they will bring about substantive evils" that Congress seeks "to prevent."

Roth v. U.S. (1957)

The Court abandoned the English common-law test approach for obscenity and held that, to be considered obscene, the material in question had to be "utterly without redeeming social importance," and articulated a new test fro obscenity: "whether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whiole appeals to the prurient interests."

Gideon v. Wainwright (1963)

The Court concluded that the state must provide an attorney to indigent defendants in felon cases.

Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969)

The Court fashioned a new test for deciding whether certain kinds of speech couldb e regualted by the government: the direct incitement test.

Lawrence v. Texas (2003)

The Court overruled its decision in Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) which had upheld anti-sodomy laws--and found that the Texas law was unconstitutional; some justices found it violated fundamental privacy rights.

Stromberg v. California (1931)

The Court overturned a communist youth camp director's conviction under a state statute prohibiting the display of a red flag, a symbol of opposition to the U.S. government.

Furman v. Georgia (1972)

The Court ruled that because the death penalty often was imposed in an arbitrary manner, it constituted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.

Engle v. Vitale (1962)

The Court ruled that the recitation in public school classrooms of a brief nondenominational prayer drafted by the local school board was unconstitutional.

D.C. v. Heller (2008)

The Court ruled that the second Amendment protects an individual's right to own a firearm for personal use.

Batson v. Kentucky (1986)

The Court ruled that the use of peremptory challenges specifically to exclude African American jurors violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Maryland v. Craig (1990)

The Court ruled that, constitutionally, the testimony of a six-year-old alleged child abuse victim via one-way closed circuit television was permissible.

Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971)

The Court tried to carve out a three part test for laws dealing with religious establishment issues. The Lemon Test.

Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989)

The Court upheld state-required fetal viability tests in the second trimester, even though these tests increased the cost of an abortion considerably. Also upheld Missouri's refusal to allow abortions to be performed in state-supported hospitals or by state-funded doctors or nurses.

Gonzales v. Oregon (2006)

The Court upheld the Oregon act. In so doing, the justices affirmed the lower court's decision. In 2008, voters in Washington State overwhelmingly approved an initiative allowing physician assisted suicide in that state.

Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969)

The Court upheld the right of high school students to wear black armbands to protest the Vietnam War.

Roe v. Wade (1973)

The Supreme Court found taht a woman's right to an abortion was protected by the right to privacy that could be implied from specific guarantees found in the Bill of Rights applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment.

Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart (1976)

The Supreme Court noted that any attempt by the government to prevent expression carried "'a heavy presumption' against its constitutionality."

Stenberg v. Carhart (2000)

The Supreme Court ruled that a Nebraska partial birth abortion statute was unconstitutionally vague because it failed to contain an exemption for a woman's health.

Barron v. Balrimore (1833)

The Supreme Court ruled that the national Bill of Rights limited only the actions of the U.S. government and not those of the states.

Schenck v. U.S. (1919)

The Supreme Court upheld the Espionage Act, ruling that Congress had a right to restrict speech "of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that will bring about the substanitive evils that Congress has a right to prevent."

Barron v. Baltimore (1833)

The Supreme Court's decision, which refused to incorporate the Bill of Rights to the state governements, prevented federal review of thos state laws.

Weeks v. U.S. (1914)

The U.S. Supreme Court adoped the exclusionary rule. The Court reasoned that allowing police and prosecutors to use the "fruits of a poisonous tree" (tainted search) would only encourage that activity.

Mapp v. Ohio (1961)

The Warren Court ruled that "all evidence obtained by searches and seizures in violation of the Constitution, is anadmissible in a state court.

Bill of Rights

The first ten amendments to the Constitution, which largely guarantee specific rights and liberties.

Civil Liberties

The personal guarantees and freedoms that the federal government cannot abridge by law, constitution, or judicial interpretation

Right to Privacy

The right to be left alone; a judicailly created principle encompassing a variety of individual actions protected by the penumbras or shadows cast by several constitutional amendments, including the First, Third, Fourth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments.

Alien and Sedition Acts

These acts made the publication of "any false, scandalous writing againsta the government of the United States" a ciminal offense.

Slander

Untrue spoken statements that defame the character of a person

Free Exercise Clause -not absolute

When secualr law comes into conflict with religious law, the right to exercise one's religious beliefs is often denied--especially if the religious beliefs in question are held by a minority or by and unppular or "suspicious" group.

Fighting Words

Words that, "by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite and immediate breach of peace." Are not subject to the restrictions of the First Amendment. Include profanity, obscenity, and threats. Don't have to be spoken, can come in the form of symbolic expression.

House V. Bell (2006)

the Court ruled a Tennessee death-row inmate who had exhaused other federal appeals was entitled to an exception to more stringent federal appeals rules due to DNA and related egvidence suggesting his innocence.