But the justices on the Supreme Court seemed to be constant and consistent champions of the constitutional rights of the downtrodden. To me, I really did see Supreme Court Justices as superheroes.
When I was taking grammar and high school history and civics classes in the 1970s and early 80s, that was my image of the Supreme Court: the last bastion of hope for the hopeless, the desperate, the disenfranchised. It’s a court that sees itself as the last protection for the unprotected. Dulles).Īll of these rights that we take for granted and see on every episode of “Law & Order” – being granted an attorney if we’re poor, being read our rights if we’re arrested, one man one vote so that voting districts are of proportional sizes, and so many more – didn’t even exist until the Supreme Court made them so in the 1950s and 60s. California) and that a natural born citizen’s citizenship could not be revoked as a punishment for a crime ( Trop v. It extended the Eighth Amendment’s prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment by finding that simply being an addict was not in and of itself a crime ( Robinson v. It was also a significant basis for the right to abortion found in Roe v. Connecticut), which would later become the basis for extending the right of privacy for contraceptive use between unmarried couples, and many years later, overturning laws banning other private, consensual sexual behavior such as sodomy laws. It established the right to privacy and extended that right to the use of contraception between married couples ( Griswold v. (Years later, the court modified the decision to rule that neutral laws that are applied to all citizens evenly need not violate Sherbert.)
Schempp), while also ruling that when laws infringe on an individual’s exercise of religion, the government must have a compelling interest and that the law must be narrowly tailored ( Sherbert v. Vitale) and conducting school-sponsored Bible readings ( Abington School District v. It prohibited public schools from composing an official school prayer ( Engel v.
HAS ANY OF THE CURRENT LIBERAL JUSTICES EVER BROKEN RANKS FREE
Massachusetts), and found that students do have at least some First Amendment free speech rights ( Tinker v. United States), defined and limited bans on obscenity ( Roth v. It struck down laws against overly vague “inflammatory” and “reactionary” speech ( Brandenburg v. Sullivan), a tactic used at the time by southern states to sue the “liberal media” for covering racist laws and policies. It protected free speech by limiting hostile states’ ability to sue the press for defamation and libel ( New York Times Co. Maryland) and extended other “search and seizure” privacy protections ( Mapp v. It prohibited prosecutors from withholding evidence from defendants ( Brady v. Illinois), and insisted that people arrested be informed of their rights ( Miranda v. Wainwright) and that people arrested have a right to legal counsel during their police interrogation ( Escobedo v. It established basic standards of criminal procedure, including finding that states must provide legal counsel for those who cannot afford it ( Gideon v. Sanders), establishing for the first time the “one man, one vote” doctrine. It struck down voting and redistricting laws meant to disenfranchise voters, particularly minorities, and established that voting districts must be roughly proportional in population size ( Baker v. It also struck down laws banning interracial marriage ( Loving v. County School Board), and that states were forced to comply with the Court’s decisions and must enforce them even when they disagreed ( Cooper v. Adams), that closing public schools and issuing vouchers for private schools as a back-door way to segregate was unconstitutional ( Griffin v. With issues of racial segregation, the Warren Court found that segregated schools and universities were unconstitutional ( Brown v. And in issue after issue, the Warren Court struck down federal and state laws and procedures that infringed on the rights of individuals. With heightened scrutiny, the government has a much higher burden of proof to show that their laws are necessarily to achieve a compelling government objective. Where a law impinged on the rights of “discrete and insular minorities” – that is, minorities historically discriminated against like ethnic minorities, women, people of unpopular religions, LGBTs, and the like.When a challenged law made it more difficult to achieve change through normal political processes and.When a law was challenged under a specifically enumerated constitutional right (such as free speech).The Warren Court suggested that heightened judicial scrutiny may be appropriate in three types of circumstances, as enumerated in United States v.
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