Thurgood Marshall was a civil rights lawyer who used the courts to fight Jim Crow and dismantle segregation in the U.S. Marshall was a towering figure who became the nation's first Black United States Supreme Court Justice. He is best known for arguing the historic 1954 Brown v.
The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the 2010 health care law last week in a decision affirming the government's power to require that Americans have health insurance or pay a financial penalty.
Roe v. Wade remains among the US Supreme Court's most highly controversial decisions. In 1973, the High Court ruled that a woman who chooses to have an abortion (in the first trimester) is within her constitutional rights to do so.
The origins of the case go back to 2012, when the court upheld the constitutionality of the ACA's penalty on individuals who lack health coverage—the so-called individual coverage mandate—as a justifiable exercise of Congress' power to tax.
Justice Anthony Kennedy authored the majority opinion and was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.
California v. Eighteen states—along with two individuals—filed a lawsuit in February 2018 arguing that, because federal lawmakers reduced the mandate's “shared responsibility payment” to $0 through the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the individual mandate is unconstitutional.
The Dred Scott decision was immediately repudiated by most of the northern United States, and it has long been considered one of the worst judicial decisions the Supreme Court ever made. Dred and Harriet Scott remained enslaved until 1857, when they were freed by their enslavers.
Marbury v. Madison strengthened the federal judiciary by establishing for it the power of judicial review, by which the federal courts could declare legislation, as well as executive and administrative actions, inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution (“unconstitutional”) and therefore null and void.
In a 5-4 Supreme Court decision Miranda v. Arizona (1966) ruled that an arrested individual is entitled to rights against self-discrimination and to an attorney under the 5th and 6th Amendments of the United States Constitution.
The Affordable Care Act's (ACA) future continues to be uncertain as the law's constitutionality will once again be considered by the U.S. Supreme Court in California v. Texas1 (known as Texas v. U.S. in the lower courts).
The outcome: In a 5-4 decision issued June 27, 2012, the court upheld the individual mandate as constitutional under the Constitution's Taxing and Spending Clause.
It ruled that the individual mandate provision was not a valid exercise of Congress' commerce or taxing powers. The court held the entire act invalid because the mandate could not be severed from any other provision.