Supreme Court of the United States. M. M. Welton v. The State of Missouri

1876 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 165
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State

The Constitution, the Supreme Court, and Religion

1967 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 657-674 ◽  
Author(s):  
William A. Carroll
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
National Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Local School ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Liberty Of Conscience ◽  
Bible Reading

The Supreme Court of the United States, whose decisions not only define constitutional law but vitally affect national policy, has long held both an honored and a controversial place in American life. In no area do its decisions bring it more honor or more controversy than in the field of religion; for, as a member of the First Congress under the Constitution said, “the rights of conscience are, in their nature, of peculiar delicacy, and will little bear the gentlest touch of governmental hand. … Thus, the same decision of the Court may be hailed by some as a great landmark in the struggle for religious liberty, and denounced by others as a serious invasion of liberty of conscience. For although it may be pleasant to dream of religion insulated from governmental touch, the dual membership of citizens in the state and in religious bodies insures that conscience and government will touch at some points with inevitable friction, and, to the conscience so touched, it makes little difference whether the governmental hand is that of a local school board, the Congress, or the Supreme Court of the United States.The Court has recently been attacked as antireligious, or at least as callous to our religious heritage, because of its decisions invalidating a state-prescribed prayer and state-prescribed Bible reading in public schools. The first of these decisions prompted the more excited outcry, but the two, at first singly and then together, have precipitated a renewed debate about the proper constitutional relationship between the state and religion.

Exile within the United States

1965 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-29
Author(s):  
Brent T. Lynch
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Prison Inmates ◽  
Federal Constitution ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Executive Agency

The Utah Board of Pardons, an executive agency, releases some Utah prison inmates by an order of "conditional termina tion," which directs the recipient to leave the state immediately and remain away permanently. The Supreme Court of Utah has recently held this order to be valid and constitutional, a ruling attacked by this article, which cites cases wherein rights guaranteed by the federal Constitution are violated. Public policy, sound penology, and constitutional law all militate against use of conditional termination.

The Unrealized Precedent of DAVIS V. BANDEMER

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas R. Seabrook
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Congressional Elections ◽  
The State ◽  
Congressional Districts ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Legislative Districts ◽  
State Legislative

This chapter examines the involvement of the Supreme Court of the United States in litigation relating to partisan gerrymandering, paying particular attention to a case that attempted to apply the previously established Davis v. Bandemer precedent to congressional elections: Vieth v. Jubelirer. It begins with an overview of Badham v. Eu, which arose from the redrawing of California's congressional districts in the aftermath of the 1980 census and its most significant holding: that the Bandemer precedent, which had initially been applied to the drawing of state legislative districts only, also extends to the drawing of congressional districts. The chapter then considers the circumstances surrounding the Vieth case, in which the alleged political gerrymander concerned the reapportionment plan for the congressional districts in the state of Pennsylvania rather than those for the state assembly. It also analyzes the Supreme Court's 2004 decision in Vieth, focusing on Justice Antonin Scalia's plurality opinion and Justice Anthony Kennedy's concurring opinion.

State and School Lands

2020 ◽  
pp. 247-252
Author(s):  
Danny M. Adkison ◽  
Lisa McNair Palmer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Public Lands ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Common Schools ◽  
School Lands

This chapter focuses on Article XI of the Oklahoma constitution, which concerns state and school lands. Section 1 provides for acceptance by the state of all grants of land and donations of money by the United States under the Enabling Act. In 1982, the Oklahoma Supreme Court held that this section, when considered with the Enabling Act, is an irrevocable compact between the United States and Oklahoma for the benefit of the state’s schools. In accepting grants from the federal government to establish the permanent school fund, Section 2 requires that the fund may only be used for the benefit of Oklahoma common schools, and that the $5 million principal of the fund shall never be spent. The state is also required to reimburse the fund for all losses that may occur, and no portion of this fund is to be used for any other purpose. Meanwhile, Section 4 confers on the legislature exclusive power to set the rules and regulations for selling public lands granted to the state by Congress for charitable and other purposes.

Keeping the bay in Glacier Bay National Park: Introducing glacier science to the United States Supreme Court

2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 359-384
Author(s):  
Bruce F. Molnia
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
National Park ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
United States Government ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
Glacier Bay ◽  
Glacier Bay National Park

ABSTRACT In 2000, seventy-five years after the founding of Glacier Bay National Monument, the United States Supreme Court authorized the State of Alaska to begin legal proceedings related to the ownership of ‘certain marine submerged lands in southeast Alaska’ including the submerged lands contained within what is now Glacier Bay National Park. This narrative presents a summary of how glacier science (glacial geology and glaciology) became an integral part of the argument prepared and presented by the United States Government in response to the State of Alaska's Complaint.

scholarly journals Discerning a Dignitary Offense: The Concept of Equal “Public Rights” during Reconstruction

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 519-553
Author(s):  
Rebecca J. Scott
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
The State ◽  
Equal Treatment ◽  
Constitutional Convention ◽  
The Public ◽  
Positive Rights ◽  
Public Rights

The mountain of modern interpretation to which the language of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution has been subjected tends to overshadow the multiple concepts of antidiscrimination that were actually circulating at the time of its drafting. Moreover, as authors on race and law have pointed out, Congress itself lacked any African American representatives during the 1866–68 moment of transitional justice. The subsequent development of a “state action doctrine” limiting the reach of federal civil rights enforcement, in turn, eclipsed important contemporary understandings of the harms that Reconstruction-era initiatives sought to combat. In contrast to the oblique language of the Fourteenth Amendment, a dignity-based legal theory of affirmative equal rights had by 1867 taken center stage in the cosmopolitan city of New Orleans. Activists formulated the concept of “public rights” as a claim to participation without discrimination in the entire sphere of “common life.” Elections for delegates to Louisiana's Constitutional Convention of 1867–68, held under the broad suffrage mandated by the Military Reconstruction Acts, yielded a convention in which half of the members were men of African descent. Seeking the “impartial treatment of all men” in “[c]hurches, hotels, cars, steamboats, theaters, stores, even schools,” the convention crafted a Bill of Rights that affirmatively guaranteed to all of the state's citizens “the same civil, political, and public rights,” independent of race or color. These innovations in the defense of human rights under law drew from a deep well of anti-caste thinking developed in domestic and transnational discussions conducted in both French and English, with participants from both sides of the Atlantic and the Caribbean. Cosmopolitan progressives such as Edouard Tinchant and Jean-Charles Houzeau worked with Louisiana-born activists including Louis Charles Roudanez, Simeon Belden, and Paul Trévigne to develop and advance the idea of public rights. Legislators crafted and passed state statutes that provided for civil penalties for violation of these rights, along with a private cause of action that could yield both actual and exemplary damages. Throughout the 1870s, however, advocates met a fierce white-supremacist counterattack, one that fused obstructionist litigation, vote suppression, and vigilante violence. A claim to equal treatment under the 1868 constitution was won in the state courts by Josephine Decuir, but was overturned in 1877 at the United States Supreme Court. With the ascent of the Democratic Party, white supremacists–including the lawyer/vigilante Robert Hardin Marr-took their seats on the state Supreme Court. By 1879, the public rights guarantees had been expunged from the state's constitution. Nonetheless, for a crucial decade, the cross-racial politics of Louisiana had overcome many of the deficits of legitimacy that often undercut moments of transitional lawmaking. Delegates to the 1867–68 Constitutional Convention took the opportunity to spell out specific positive rights that they saw as essential to full civil freedom. And at the center, they placed their insistence that the state had an obligation to assure that men and women of color would not be subjected to forced indignity in the public sphere.

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