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Supreme Court Decisions

About: Supreme Court Decisions is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1804 publications have been published within this topic receiving 17066 citations.


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Book ChapterDOI
TL;DR: There have been three momentous Supreme Court decisions in the history of Afro-Americans: Dred Scott v. Sanford, Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. The Board of Education as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: There have been three momentous Supreme Court decisions in the history of Afro-Americans: Dred Scott v. Sanford, Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. The Board of Education. In contrast to Dred Scott, Plessy was decided after the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment which prohibited discriminatory state action in regard to equal protection of the laws and due process of law and after the coming of Social Darwinism which included a body of sociological theories utilized to supplement American conservatism. Considering the historical background of the times, Robert Harris regarded Plessy as "a compound of bad logic, bad history, bad sociology, and bad constitutional law." I Despite the historical significance of Plessy, its historiography is sparing, cursory, tangential and misleading. Among the outstanding monograph essays on the topic are: C. Vann Woodward's cursory historical account of the case in his article "The Birth of Jim Crow: Plessy v. Ferguson;" the brief and over-simplified account of the "separate but equal" origin in Leonard Levy and Harlan Phillips' article "The Roberts Case;" and two articles by Barton Bernstein in the Journal of Negro History interpreting the Plessy decision as sociological jurisprudence, and his 1962 case study analysis criticizing the Louisiana Supreme Court for misleading the United States Supreme Court in regard to state statutes and legal issues.2 Significant related essays on Plessy may be found in Otto H. Olsen's documentary compilation The Thin Disguise, and a similar documentary edition by Albert P. Blaustein and Clarence Clyde Ferguson, Jr. entitled Desegregation and the Law. There are several essays, articles and books explaining the historical problems and different interpretations of Jim Crow history. Of major importance are: John Hope Franklin, "History of Racial Segregation in the United States;" August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, "A Strange Chapter in the Career of Jim Crow"-a study on Black opposition to street car segregation in Savannah, Georgia; Joel Williamson (ed.), The Origins of Segregation, which is a collection of controversial essays on the topic; a series of articles by Alexander M. Bickel, John P. Frank and Robert F. Munro and Alfred Kelly indicating that the Fourteenth Amendment did not require the Supreme Court to embrace the "separate but equal" principle, and Alan Westin's valuable analysis of Justice John Marshall Harlan in his "John Marshall Harlan and the Constitutional Rights of Negroes: The Transformation of a Southerner."3 The most popular reference in regard to recent segregation is C. Vann Woodward's Strange Career of Jim Crow; but the most thorough study of underlying economic factors, politics, philosophy and

11 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The case of Nancy Cruzan is the first so‐called “right to die” case to be heard by the US Supreme Court and the decision in her case will have serious implications for care of the elderly.
Abstract: The case of Ms. Nancy Cruzan is the first so-called "right to die" case to be heard by the US Supreme Court. The Missouri Supreme Court had ruled that Ms. Cruzan's parents, who are also her court-appointed guardians, cannot authorize the withdrawal of artificial hydration and nutrition from their daughter. Ms. Cruzan has been in a persistent vegetative state since an auto accident more than six years ago. Even though Ms. Cruzan is only 32 years old, the decision in her case will have serious implications for care of the elderly. Key features of the Missouri Supreme Court decision include their claims that (1) the authority for surrogate decision-making flows from the parens patriae power of the State rather than from the authority of the incompetent person, (2) the State has an unqualified interest in the preservation of life, and (3) the medical provision of nutrition and hydration ought to be considered differently than other forms of medical treatment. Such claims are at considerable variance from accepted standards of ethically defensible decision-making that focus on the well-being of the patient understood according to the patient's own values and life goals. If the US Supreme Court restricts decisions to forgo life-sustaining treatment according to patient prognosis, capacity for decision-making, type of treatment, or state of residence, then a patient-centered standard of medical decision-making will be impossible to sustain and the maximization of life extension will be required without regard to the suffering thereby imposed.

11 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Annanas discusses the Court's action, which dealt only with the judicial reviewability under federal statute of the FDA's decision not to exercise its authority over the use of drugs in interstate commerce, and notes that, by dealing only with procedural issues, the Court avoided ruling on the death penalty itself.
Abstract: In 1977, Texas and Oklahoma became the first states to legalize administration of the death penalty by lethal injection; by late 1985, 14 other states had followed suit. Opponents of the death penalty petitioned the Food and Drug Administration in 1980 to declare drugs specified for use in executions as \"not approved,\" and to prevent their use for that purpose. When the FDA denied their request, the petitioners took legal action against the agency, eventually arguing their case before the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled against them in Heckler v. Chaney (1985). Annas discusses the Court's action, which dealt only with the judicial reviewability under federal statute of the FDA's decision not to exercise its authority over the use of drugs in interstate commerce. He notes that, by dealing only with procedural issues, the Court avoided ruling on the death penalty itself.

11 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: The progress and difficulties experienced in litigating human rights in Zimbabwe, from independence in 1980 to the present day, are discussed in this paper, where the authors identify certain time frames that influenced the development of human rights litigation in Zimbabwe and briefly outline various cases that set precedents for future litigation.
Abstract: This article examines the progress and difficulties experienced in litigating human rights in Zimbabwe, from independence in 1980 to the present day. The article begins by discussing the constitutional basis for human rights litigation and explains the various avenues to pursue issues relating to the Declaration of Rights in the Supreme Court. The article identifies certain time frames that influenced the development of human rights litigation in Zimbabwe and briefly outlines various cases that set precedents for future litigation. During the first five years after Zimbabwe had gained independence, the ability of the Supreme Court to hear litigation on human rights issues was severely limited due to a constitutional provision that determined that existing laws could not be challenged under the Declaration of Rights. Thereafter followed what has been described as the 'golden era of human rights litigation', from 1985-2001. Decisions were taken in almost every field of human rights specified in the Declaration of Rights and the vast majority of these decisions favoured the citizen. Post-2001 human rights litigation, however, has by March 2003 yielded only two Supreme Court decisions where the citizens' rights prevailed. The problems currently experienced by the judiciary in Zimbabwe are identified and it is argued that the future of the judiciary is intertwined with the future of the government of Zimbabwe.

11 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
202311
202221
202118
202026
201938
201832