The Supreme Court Then and Now
You may want to start online with Professor Howard’s
2005 essay in EJournal USA, “ To say What the
Law is: The Supreme Court as Arbiter of Constitutionality”:
http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/
itdhr/0405/ijde/howard.htm
Most of the issues cases mentioned in Dr. Howard’s
essay are discussed more fully elsewhere in this issue.
We have an entire essay on Roosevelt’s “court
packing” scheme and Richard Bernstein’s
essay on the Marshall and Taney courts provides valuable
details on issues in the Court’s early decades.
Our “interactive” feature will lead you
to a wide range of sources for the 1963 decision in
Gideon that established an indigent defendant’s
right to counsel and to the 1954 case of Brown v.
Board of Education.
Cases mentioned in passing by Dr. Howard and not covered
elsewhere in this issue received solid entries in Wikipedia.
These include:
The Warren Court decisions on voting inequities:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_man,_one_vote
Lochner v. N.Y., the 1905 decision involving a New York
baker:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lochner_v._New_York
The 1977 dispute between Washington and North Carolina
apple growers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunt_v._Washington_
State_Apple_Advertising_Comm.
New York Times Co. v Sullivan, the court’s 1964
decision on libel:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_york_times_co._v._sullivan
The concept of “the right to privacy” in
Roe V. Wade and other
landmark cases:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._wade
You may also want to read:
Garrow, David J. Liberty and Sexuality: The Right
to Privacy and
the Making of Roe v. Wade. Rev. ed. Berkeley: University
of
California Press, 1998.
You’ll find the PBS Supreme Court “A Day
in the Life” classroom
segment especially effective in showing how daily life
in American has
been affected by the Court’s decisions:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/educators/adayinthelife.html
Last, but certainly not least, the SCHS “We the
Students”
section presents cases relating directly to the lives
of American
schoolchildren with “Case Texts” and suggested
classroom exercises:
http://www.supremecourthistory.org/05_learning/subs/05_a03.html
