| Court Case | Decision |
| Barron v. Baltimore | (1833) the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution's Bill of Rights restricts only the powers of the federal government and not those of the state governments. |
| Craig v. Boren | (1976) Ruling that classification of individuals based on gender must be related to an important government objective; replaced minimum rationality standard. |
| New York Times v. US | (1971) Libel case-writer did it with intent to defame-knew it was false-wrote it with malicious intent. Public officials/figures have less privacy rights. |
| Gibbons v. Ogden | (1824) Clarified the commerce clause and affirmed Congressional power over interstate commerce. |
| Gregg v. Georgia | (1976) Death penalty is not "cruel and unusual punishment" in cases of murder. |
| Branzburg v. Hayes | (1972) Ruled against a special First Amendment privilege that would allow the press to refuse to answer grand jury questions concerning news sources. |
| Miller v. California | (1973) Ruling that determined the obscenity clause to related to works that lack literary, artisitic, political or scientific value. (LAPS test) |
| Miranda v. Arizona | (1966) Ruled that detained criminal suspects, prior to police questioning, must be informed of their constitutional right to an attorney and against self-incrimination |
| Reed v. Reed | (1973) In a unanimous decision, the Court held that the law's dissimilar treatment of men and women was unconstitutional. |
| McCulloch v. Maryland | (1819) The Court ruled that states cannot tax the federal government, i.e. the Bank of the United States; the phrase "the power to tax is the power to destroy"; confirmed the constitutionality of the Bank of the United States. |
| NAACP v. Alabama | (1958) The Supreme Court ruled that Alabama's demand for the lists had violated the right of due process guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. |
| Lemon v. Kurtzman | (1971) Government-supported programs in religious schools must have a primary secular purpose, neither aid nor inhibit religion, & not excessively entangle government, religion. |
| Woodson v. North Carolina | (1976) Ruled that a North Carolina law establishing a mandatory death sentence for all convicted first-degree murderers constituted a violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. |
| Marbury v. Madison | (1803) Established the principle of judicial review |
| Gideon v. Wainwright | (1963) Ruled that a defendant in a felony trial must be provided a lawyer free of charge if the defendant cannot afford one. |
| Dred Scott v. Sandford | (1857) The court ruled that slaves are property, not people. (Before 14th amendment) |
| Bakke v. Regents of the University of California | (1978) Ruled that a university's use of racial "quotas" in its admissions process was unconstitutional, but a school's use of "affirmative action" to accept more minority applicants was constitutional in some circumstances. |
| Mapp v. Ohio | (1961) Established exclusionary rule; illegally obtained evidence cannot be used in court; Warren Court’s judicial activism. |
| School District of Abbington Township, Pennsylvania v. Schempp | (1963) Decision holding that a Pennsylvania law requiring Bible reading in schools violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment. |
| Zurcher v. The Stanford Daily | (1978) Ruled that the First Amendment would not protect newspapers and other media outlets from third party search warrants and that such search warrants were not overly intrusive into the daily operations of newspapers. |
| Engel v. Vitale | (1962) Mandatory prayer in schools is a violation of the establishment clause. |
| Gitlow v. New York | (1925) Anarchist calling for overthrow of the government. Established precedent of federalizing Bill of Rights (applying them to States); States cannot deny freedom of speech – protected through due process clause of Amendment 14 |
| Planned Parenthood v. Casey | (1992) Upheld the constitutional right to have an abortion but lowered the standard for analyzing restrictions of that right, invalidating one regulation but upholding the others. |
| Schenck v. US | (1919) Case involving limits on free speech. Established the "clear and present danger" principle. |
| Roe v. Wade | (1973) Ruling that decriminalized abortion. |
| Plessy v. Ferguson | (1896) The courts ruled in favor of segregation -- "Separate but Equal". |
| Near v. Minnesota | (1931) Supreme Court decision holding that the first amendment protects newspapers from prior restraint. |
| Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas | (1954) Unanimously held that the racial segregation of children in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. |
| Roth v. US | (1957) Obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment |
| Griswold v. Connecticut | (1965) Constitution implicitly guarantees citizens' right to privacy. |
| Lynch v. Donnelly | (1984) The nativity scene was allowed to remain in view; Allowed holiday decorations on town property |
| Texas v. Johnson | (1989) Flag-burning is symbolic speech with a political purpose and is protected by 1st Amendment. |
| Zelman v. Simmons-Harris | (2002) Tested the allowance of school vouchers in relation to the establishment clause of the First Amendment. |
| US v. O'Brien | (1968) Criminal prohibition against burning a draft card did not violate the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech |
| McClesky v. Kemp | (1987) Upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty against charges that it violated the Fourteenth Amendment because minority defendants were more likely to receive the death penalty than White defendants. |
