[Unknown Act > Facts]
California police officers saw Charles Acevedo enter an apartment known to contain several packages of marijuana and leave a short time later carrying a paper bag approximately the same size as one of the packages. When Acevedo put the bag in the trunk of his car and began to drive away, the officers stopped the car, searched the bag, and found marijuana. At his trial, Acevedo made a motion to suppress the marijuana as evidence, since the police had not had a search warrant. When the trial court denied his motion, Acevedo pleaded guilty and appealed the denial of the motion. The California Court of Appeal reversed the trial court, ruling that the marijuana should have been suppressed as evidence. The Supreme Court had ruled previously that officers can thoroughly search an automobile if they have probable cause to believe there is evidence somewhere in the vehicle ( U.S. v. Ross ), and also that officers need a warrant to search a closed container ( U.S. v. Chadwick ). The California Court of Appeal decided that the latter case was more relevant. Since the officers only had probable cause to believe the bag contained evidence - not the car generally - they could not open the bag without a search warrant. The California Supreme Court denied review, but the Supreme Court granted the State's petition.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
Yes. In a 6-3 decision authored by Justice Harry Blackmun, the Court reversed the Court of Appeal and ruled that the "automobile exception" to the Fourth Amendment's general search-warrant requirement is broad enough to cover a situation where the police only have probable cause to believe there is evidence in a specific movable container within the car. The Court noted that the warrant requirement previously had depended on a "curious line between the search of an automobile that coincidentally turns up a container and the search of a container that coincidentally turns up in an automobile." In place of that uncertain distinction, the Court adopted a single rule: "The police may search an automobile and the containers within it where they have probable cause to believe contraband or evidence is contained." Justices White, Stevens, and Marshall dissented.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
Frank Garner was convicted of defrauding Coy Grogan and ordered to repay him. Garner then filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, asking the Bankruptcy Court to discharge (that is, nullify) his court-ordered repayment to Grogan. Grogan argued that the debt should not be discharged because section 523(a) of the bankruptcy code exempts obligations for money obtained by "actual fraud." The Bankruptcy Court, based on portions of the fraud case, agreed and did not allow Garner to discharge the debt. The District Court affirmed, but the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, finding that the standard of proof used in the original fraud case - the "preponderance of the evidence" standard - was lower than the standard of proof demanded under section 523(a) - a "clear and convincing evidence" standard. The Court found that most states used the "clear and convincing" standard in fraud cases and that Congress would have explicitly stated it if they used a different standard. Moreover, it argued that the intention of the bankruptcy code to provide a "fresh start" suggested that the standard most favorable to bankruptcy filers should be used (that is, the more demanding "clear and convincing" standard).


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
Courts should apply the "preponderance of the evidence" standard. Justice John Paul Stevens, for a unanimous Supreme Court, wrote that the lack of a specified standard of evidence in section 523(a) implied that Congress had intended the preponderance of the evidence standard to be used. That lower standard was generally used in civil actions between private parties (including bankruptcy filings) unless particularly important interests were at stake. Protecting a bankruptcy filer who had previously been convicted of fraud was not sufficiently important to demand a higher level of evidence.
Stevens also wrote that the "fresh start" intention of the bankruptcy laws did not suggest a higher standard of evidence. "In the same breath that we have invoked this 'fresh start policy," he wrote, "we have been careful to explain that the Act limits the opportunity for a completely unencumbered new beginning to the 'honest but unfortunate debtor.'" A debtor previously convicted of fraud did not fit this description.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
In Broward County, Florida, Sheriff's Department officers regularly boarded buses during stops to ask passenger for permission to search their luggage. Terrance Bostick, a passenger, was questioned by two officers who sought permission to search his belongings and advised him of his right to refuse. After obtaining Bostick's permission, the officers searched his bags, found cocaine, and arrested him on drug trafficking charges. Bostick filed a motion to suppress the evidence on the ground that it was illegally obtained, but the trial court denied the motion. Following an affirmance and certification from the Florida Court of Appeals, the State Supreme Court held that the bus searches were per se unconstitutional because police did not afford passengers the opportunity to "leave the bus" in order to avoid questioning. Florida appealed and the Supreme Court granted certiorari.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
No. The Court, in a 6-to-3 decision, noted that when deciding if a search request is overly coercive, within a confined space such as a bus, one must not look at whether a party felt "free to leave," but whether a party felt free to decline or terminate the search encounter. The Court held that in the absence of intimidation or harassment, Bostick could have refused the search request. Moreover, the fact that he knew the search would produce contraband had no bearing on whether his consent was voluntarily obtained. The test of whether a "reasonable person" felt free to decline or terminate a search presupposes his or her innocence.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
In 1970, Congress enacted the Controlled Substances Act, which established five categories, or “schedules,” of substances for the purposes of regulation and prosecution. The Act grants the Attorney General the authority to add or remove substances and to move substances among the schedules. The Act also lays out specific procedures in order for the Attorney General to exercise this authority. Because the procedures lengthened the process of making any changes to the enforcement of the Act, drug manufacturers were able to develop products that took advantage of unforeseen loopholes in the Act. In 1984, Congress amended the Act to allow the Attorney General to temporarily schedule drugs, which expedited the enforcement process. The Attorney General then delegated these temporary scheduling powers to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), which temporarily scheduled the designer drug “Euphoria” as a Schedule I substance.
During this time, the DEA executed a valid search warrant on the home of Daniel and Lyrissa Touby, where they found a fully operational Euphoria laboratory. The Toubys were indicted for manufacturing and conspiring to manufacture Euphoria. They moved for dismissal by arguing that the Controlled Substances Act unconstitutionally delegates legislative power to the Attorney General and the Attorney General improperly delegated authority to the DEA. The district court denied the motion, and the Toubys were convicted. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed the convictions.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
No, yes. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor delivered the opinion of the 9-0 majority. The Court held that the nondelegation doctrine allows Congress to seek the assistance of other branches of government by leaving a certain degree of discretion up to other actors. By providing sufficient guidance to, and placing specific restrictions on, the Attorney General in the Controlled Substances Act, Congress did not unconstitutionally delegate legislative power. The Court also held that the Act permits the Attorney General to delegate authority to other officers and employees of the Department of Justice, so the delegation to the Drug Enforcement Agency was appropriate.
In his concurring opinion, Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote that the Controlled Substances Act allows judicial review as a method of ensuring the constitutionality of the temporary scheduling and delegation. He also argued that the issue of delegation of powers within a branch of government is addressed by the Due Process Clause, and the majority’s decision does not examine the case within that framework.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
Johnson Controls, Inc. ("Johnson") manufactures batteries whose assembly process entails exposure to high levels of lead. After discovering that eight of its female employees became pregnant while maintaining blood lead levels in excess of those thought safe by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Johnson barred all its female employees - except those with medically documented infertility - from engaging in tasks that require exposure to lead in access of recommended OSHA levels. Following its passage, the United Automobile Workers (UAW) challenged Johnson's fetal-protection policy as sexually discriminatory in violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (Act). When the Appellate Court affirmed a district court decision in favor of Johnson, the UAW appealed and the Supreme Court granted certiorari.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
Yes. In a unanimous decision, the Court noted that even well intentioned proposals are forbidden if they result in discrimination. Johnson's fetal-protection plan discriminated against women by not requiring their male counterparts to demonstrate proof of medical sterility, despite the fact that lead exposure has also proved hazardous to male reproductive systems. The Court added that Johnson's fetal-protection plan fell outside the bona fide occupational qualification exception of Title VII, since the exception only permits employers to discriminate based on qualities that detrimentally impact on an employee's job performance. In the present case, although lead exposure may be harmful to the unborn, Johnson furnished no proof that it detracted from its female employees' abilities to perform any of their essential tasks.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
Under Article V, Section 26, of Missouri's Constitution, state court judges must retire at the age of seventy. The two petitioners in this case, both of whom were Missouri state judges, challenged the state constitution's retirement requirement on legislative and constitutional grounds.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
No and no. Missouri's mandatory retirement requirement for its state court judges did not violate either the ADEA or the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. In addition to emphasizing Missouri's, or any other state's, Tenth Amendment right to define the qualifications of its highest state officials, the Court held that the regulations of the ADEA did not apply to "policy-making" appointees such as state court judges. With respect to the petitioners' Equal Protection challenge, the Court employed a rational basis test to examine whether a rational relationship existed between Missouri's goal of promoting competent state court judges and its retirement requirement. Noting the connection between increasing age and declining mental and physical capacities, the Court held that Missouri's retirement requirement for judges who reach the age of seventy was not unreasonable.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
A Dade County police officer overheard Enio Jimeno arranging what appeared to be a drug transaction over a public telephone. He followed in his car, and eventually pulled Jimeno over for a traffic violation. He told him he had reason to believe Jimeno had drugs in the car, and asked for permission to search it. Jimeno consented, and a search revealed a brown paper bag with cocaine inside it. At trial, Jimeno argued that his consent to the search of the car did not extend to the closed paper bag within the car. The trial court agreed, excluded the drugs found inside the bag as the product of an unconstitutional search under the Fourth Amendment. The Florida District Court of Appeal and the Florida Supreme Court both affirmed.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
Yes. In a 7-to-2 decision, the Supreme Court held that the search did not violate the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable searches. "The touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is reasonableness," wrote Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist in the majority opinion. "We think it was objectively reasonable for the police to conclude that the general consent to search respondent's car included consent to search containers within that car which might bear drugs. A reasonable person may be expected to know that narcotics are generally carried in some form of a container."


[Unknown Act > Facts]
The national government provides funds for family planning services (Title X). The Department of Health and Human Services issued regulations limiting the ability of Title X fund recipients to engage in abortion-related activities. Title X funds were to be used only to support preventive family planning services.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
No. The intent of Congress in the enactment of Title X is ambiguous with regard to abortion counseling. Consequently, the Court will defer to the expertise of the administrative agency. The Court held that the "regulations promulgated by the Secretary [of HHS] do not raise the sort of 'grave and doubtful constitutional questions' that would lead us to assume Congress did not intend to authorize their issuance." Should government subsidize one protected right (family planning), as it does in this case, it does not follow that government must subsidize analogous counterpart rights (abortion services).


[Unknown Act > Facts]
A Tennessee court tried Pervis Payne for murdering Charisse Christopher and her daughter Lacie. In hopes of avoiding the death penalty, Payne provided four witnesses testifying to his good character. The prosecution had Charisse's mother share how Charisse's death had impacted her surviving son Nicholas. In closing arguments, the prosecutor referenced Nicholas' loss of his mother when calling for the death penalty. The jury convicted him and sentenced him to death. Payne argued that the prosecution could not use testimony of how the victim's death impacted family members when contending for the death penalty. The Tennessee Supreme Court ruled against him.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
No. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist delivered the opinion for a 6-3 court. The Court overruled Booth v. Maryland and South Carolina v. Gathers which prohibited the submission of evidence relating to the harms caused by the victim's death. The Court reasoned that since "[v]irtually no limits are placed on the relevant mitigating evidence a capital defendant may introduce concerning his own circumstances," the prosecution must be allowed to submit similar counter evidence. Evidence regarding the "assessment of the harm caused by the defendant has long been an important factor in determining the appropriate punishment, and victim impact evidence is simply another method of informing the sentencing authority about such harm."


[Unknown Act > Facts]
Robert S. Minnick and James Dyess escaped from the Clark County Jail. The next day, they broke into a mobile home to search for weapons. While in the home, the owner returned with a friend and the friend’s infant son. Minnick and Dyess shot and killed the two adults and tied up two young women who arrived later. Minnick and Dyess fled to Mexico, but after a falling out, Minnick went to California alone where police arrested him on a warrant for the Mississippi murders.
After the arrest, two FBI officers came to interview Minnick at the San Diego Jail. Minnick refused, asking the officers to “Come back Monday when I have a lawyer.” Minnick did meet with an appointed lawyer on two or three occasions. The next Monday, the deputy sheriff of Clark County came to question Minnick. Prison officials told Minnick he “could not refuse” to speak to the sheriff. The deputy sheriff advised Minnick of his rights and Minnick refused to sign a waiver form. Minnick then confessed to one of the murders, saying that Dyess forced him to shoot. At trial, Minnick moved to suppress those statements, but the court denied the motion, reasoning that Edwards v Arizona only required counsel to be made available to an accused. Minnick argued that he was entitled to have counsel present at all questioning. The jury found Minnick guilty of capital murder and sentenced him to death. The Supreme Court of Mississippi affirmed, holding that Minnick’s Fifth Amendment right to counsel was satisfied because he had met with counsel.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
Yes. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for a 6-2 majority, reversed and remanded. The Supreme Court held that once counsel is requested, no interrogation can take place without counsel unless the accused waives that right. The right to counsel is not satisfied by merely meeting with counsel outside the interrogation room. The Edwards protection did end as soon as an accused meets with counsel.
Justice Antonin Scalia dissented, writing that there was no justification for creating a rebuttable presumption that an accused has not waived his right to counsel after invoking that right. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist joined in the dissent.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
Cohen was a campaign associate in the 1982 Minnesota gubernatorial race. He gave court records concerning another party's candidate for lieutenant governor to the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Minneapolis Star and Tribune. Though he had received a promise of confidentiality from the reporters, the papers identified Cohen in their stories. He was fired as a result. Cohen sued the papers in state court, alleging a breach of contract. At trial, Cohen won compensatory damages and the state appellate court upheld the award. But the Minnesota Supreme Court reversed, ruling that Cohen's claim relied on state "promissory estoppel" law, a law that essentially prevented a promisor from breaking a promise. The court ruled that the First Amendment's free press guarantee prevented promissory estoppel from applying to the newspapers.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
No. In a 5-4 opinion delivered by Justice Byron White, the Court held that the First Amendment did not bar a promissory estoppel suit against the press. The Court first affirmed that such a cause of action, though private, triggered the First Amendment's protection. But the Court went on to rule that the state's promissory estoppel law was generally applicable and did not target the press. The law's enforcement against the press thus did not require stricter scrutiny than would its enforcement against other individuals or institutions.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
Rural Telephone Service Company, Inc. is a public utility that provides telephone service to several communities in northwest Kansas. Rural also publishes a telephone directory that consists of white and yellow pages. Feist Publications, Inc. is a publishing company that specializes in area-wide telephone directories that cover a much larger geographic range than Rural's directories. When Rural refused to license its white pages listings to Feist, Feist extracted the listings it needed from Rural's directory without consent. Although Feist altered many of Rural's listings, several were identical to listings in Rural's white pages. The District Court granted summary judgment to Rural in its copyright infringement suit, holding that telephone directories are copyrightable. The Court of Appeals affirmed.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
No. In a 9-0 opinion delivered by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the Court held that the names, towns, and telephone numbers copied by Feist were not original to Rural and therefore were not protected by the copyright in Rural's combined white and yellow pages directory. The Court reasoned that Rural's white pages did not satisfy the minimum constitutional standards for copyright protection because the information they contained lacked the requisite originality, as Rural had not selected, coordinated, or arranged the uncopyrightable facts in any original way. "Because Rural's white pages lack the requisite originality, Feist's use of the listings cannot constitute infringement," wrote Justice O'Connor.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
First American Bankshares, Inc. (FABI) began a "freeze-out" merger in which the First American Bank of Virginia (Bank) merged into Virginia Bankshares, Inc. (VBI), a wholly owned subsidiary of FABI. VBI already owned 85% of the Bank's shares, and would acquire the remaining 15% from the Bank's minority shareholders. The Bank's executive committee and full board approved the merger at $42 a share. The directors then solicited proxies for voting on the proposed merger at the next annual meeting. In their solicitation, the directors stated that they approved the plan because the price allowed the minority shareholders to achieve a "high" value for their stock. Sandberg did not give her approval of the merger and brought suit, the federal ground for which was soliciting proxies in violation of SEC Rule 14a-9, which prohibits the solicitation of proxies by means of materially false or misleading statements. The trial court instructed the jury that it could find for Sandberg as long as the proxy solicitation involved material misstatements, and the proxy solicitation was an "essential link" in the merger process. The jury found for Sandberg, awarding her $18 a share, finding that she would have received that much more if the stock had been valued adequately.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
Yes and no, respectively. Terms like "high value," in a commercial context, are reasonably understood to rest on a factual basis, and so could be shown to be misleading by garden-variety evidence. Furthermore, they can be materially misleading even if other information is available in the statement upon which an expert could deduce that they are false. A proxy statement should inform, not challenge the reader's critical wits. However, the link between the statement and the merger process is too speculative and too procedurally intractable to find an implied private right of action in cases in which the minority shareholders' votes are not required by law or corporate bylaw, and where the plaintiff's theory is that the vote was cosmetic.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
Under 26 U.S.C. 7443A(b), the Chief Judge of the United States Tax Court (an Article I Court established by Congress) may appoint special trial judges to certain specified proceedings explicitly laid out in the statute, in which the special trial judges may issue decisions. He may also appoint them to "any other proceeding which the chief judge may designate," but in those unspecified cases the special trial judge may not issue a final decision, only draft an opinion which must be reviewed by a regular judge of the Tax Court.
Freytag and several other defendants were charged with using a tax shelter to avoid paying roughly $1.5 billion in taxes. They consented to have their case heard by a special trial judge. The trial judge eventually drafted an opinion unfavorable to their position, which was reviewed and adopted by the Chief Judge. They then appealed the case, arguing that their case was too complex to assign to a special trial judge under section 7443A. Congress's decision to allow the Chief Judge to make such an assignment, they argued, violated the Appointments Clause of the Constitution (Article II Section 2), which provides that Congress may "vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments." Freytag asserted that the "Courts of Law" referred to there were only Article III courts (Federal District Courts, Circuit Courts of Appeals, and the Supreme Court, all of which have judges with lifetime tenure), and that the Chief Judge was part of an Article I court, meaning that Congress could not assign him the power of appointment. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected that argument, affirming the Tax Court's decisions.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
Yes and yes. On the question of whether 7443A permitted the assignment of complex cases to special trial judges, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the statute unambiguously did allow such appointments. Justice Harry Blackmun, in the majority opinion, wrote, "The plain language of 7443A(b)(4) surely authorizes the Chief Judge's assignment of petitioners' cases to a special trial judge. When we find the terms of a statute unambiguous, judicial inquiry should be complete except in rare and exceptional circumstances."
On the Appointments Clause question, however, the Court was divided 5-to-4. Justice Blackmun wrote for the majority that Article I Courts, like Article III Courts, exercised the judicial power of the United States and were therefore "Courts of Law" for purposes of Article II Section 2. While they may have been more dependent on Congress than the other branches, they were nevertheless independent, and it therefore did not violate the separation of powers to allow them to make appointments.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
An Arizona prosecutor brought a charge of first-degree murder against Schad after he was found with a murder victim's vehicle and other belongings. In Arizona, first-degree murder is murder committed with premeditation or murder committed in an attempt to rob. Schad maintained that circumstantial evidence established at most that he was a thief. The jury's instructions addressed first-and second-degree murder, not theft. The jury convicted Schad of first-degree murder. The judge sentenced Schad to death.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
No. In a complex decision, Souter's plurality opinion acknowledged that jury instructions offering all-or-nothing alternatives in capital cases may overstep the Due Process Clause. But Schad's jury was not faced with such a choice. His jury had been instructed on the non-capital offense of second-degree murder.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
Glen Theatre and the Kitty Kat Lounge in South Bend, Indiana, operated entertainment establishments with totally nude dancers. An Indiana law regulating public nudity required dancers to wear "pasties" and a "G-string" when they perform. The Theatre and Lounge sued to stop enforcement of the statute.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
No. The Court was fractured and there was no majority opinion. Chief Justice Rehnquist, in a plurality opinion, conceded that nude dancing was a form of expressive activity. But he maintained that the public indecency statute is justified despite the incidental limitations on such expressive activity. The statute "furthers a substantial government interest in protecting order and morality." The proscription on public nudity is unrelated to the erotic message the dancers seek to convey.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
Arizona law officials suspected that Oreste Fulminante murdered his stepdaughter. He was later arrested in New York for an unrelated crime after the murder and incarcerated. While in prison he became friends with Anthony Sarivola, an inmate paid by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to collect information on other inmates while he served his term. Fulminante initially denied killing his stepdaughter to Sarivola, but admitted it when Sarivola offered him protection from other inmates in exchange for the truth. After his release, Fulminante also confessed to Donna Sarivola, Anthony's wife. Fulminante was indicted for murder in Arizona. Fulminante argued in trial court that his two confessions to the Sarivolas could not be used as evidence since the first was coerced and the second based on the first. The court admitted his confessions as evidence, convicted him, and sentenced him to death. On appeal, the Arizona Supreme Court ordered Fulminante to be retried without the use of the confessions.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
Yes and yes. Justice Byron R. White and Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist delivered parts of the opinion, both majorities by a 5-4 vote. The Court held that Fulminante was coerced to confess in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Court found that "it was fear of physical violence, absent protection from his friend Sarivola, which motivated Fulminante to confess." This motivation invalidated his confession. Since Fulminante's confession to Donna Sarivola was closely tied to his first coerced confession, the Court dismissed both. The Court also found that the confessions played a determinative role in the trial. It maintained that a "successful prosecution depended on the jury's believing the two confessions." Because the confessions were critical to the outcome of the trial, the fact that they were obtained coercively could not be dismissed as a harmless error. Four justices dissented to using harmless error analysis for coerced confessions on the ground that confessions always significantly affect a trial's outcome.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
For tax purposes, Cottage Savings Association exchanged its interests in the mortgages of 252 single family homes with several other savings and loan associations, receiving in return 305 mortgages that, taken together, had the same market value. The fair market value of the mortgages it gave away, however, were worth $2.5 million less than their original value. In accordance with the accounting procedures of the federal regulatory body of savings and loan corporations, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB), Cottage Savings recorded the exchanged properties as "substantially identical" (because they had the same fair market value).
When Cottage Savings filed its federal income tax return, however, it claimed a $2.5 million loss - the difference between the original value of the mortgages it gave away and the current value of the mortgages it received in return. The IRS refused to recognize the difference as a deductible loss, however, because under section 1001(a) of Title 26 of the tax code, the change in a property's value is only taken into consideration when it is realized through the "sale or disposition of [the] property." An exchange of property only constitutes a "disposition" if there is a "material difference" between the properties exchanged. Because Cottage Savings had reported the properties exchanged as "substantially identical," the IRS ruled, a "disposition" could not have taken place and the loss in value could not be deducted. Cottage savings took the issue to a federal Tax Court, which disagreed with the IRS and ruled the deduction permissible. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, however, siding with the IRS.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
Yes. In a 7-to-2 decision, the Supreme Court held that the definition of "substantially identical" under the FHLBB regulations was intentionally flexible and broad enough to include even properties that were "materially different" for IRS purposes. Justice Thurgood Marshall, in the majority opinion, wrote that exchanged properties are "materially different" if they "embody legally distinct entitlements." The properties involved in this exchange clearly satisfied that test. "Because the participation interests exchanged by Cottage Savings and the other S & L's derived from loans that were made to different obligors and secured by different homes, the exchanged interests did embody legally distinct entitlements. Consequently, we conclude that Cottage Savings realized its losses at the point of exchange."


[Unknown Act > Facts]
McLaughlin was arrested without a warrant and argued that Riverside did not act promptly (within 48 hours) on judicial probable cause determinations and arraignment procedures in his case and others.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
The Court held that Riverside's actions did not comply with the Gerstein precedent. Justice O'Connor argued that it was the state's burden to demonstrate extraordinary circumstances when delaying probable cause determinations beyond 48 hours. The lower court in this case had placed that responsibility on the accused. Intervening weekends or complicated pretrial proceedings were not legitimate reasons for delay.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
After Jeffrey Masson was fired from his position at the Sigmund Freud Archives, Janet Malcolm interviewed him for an article in the New Yorker magazine. Malcolm_s article included many long direct quotations from Masson. The article presented Masson as extremely arrogant and condescending; at one point, he was quoted as calling himself "the greatest analyst who ever lived." However, Malcolm fabricated many of the more distasteful quotations. Masson sued for libel. The District Court dismissed the case on First Amendment free speech grounds because Masson was a public figure.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
No. In a 9-0 vote, the Court ruled that the First Amendment s free expression clause could not protect the distortions in Malcolm s article. Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion also explained when a direct quotation can be considered false, and therefore potentially libelous. The First Amendment limits libel suits by public figures. A report about a public figure cannot be considered "false" unless it is a gross distortion of the truth. Justice Kennedy's opinion explained that a direct quotation will qualify as such a distortion if the quoted words differ in their factual meaning from anything the public figure really said. Malcolm_s fabrication qualified as a "gross distortion," and the Court granted Masson standing to sue.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
Larry Joe Powers, a white male, was indicted on the charges of two counts of aggravated murder and one count of attempted aggravated murder. He pleaded not guilty, and invoked his right to a jury trial. During the jury selection process, Powers objected when the prosecution excluded a black individual from the jury without explanation. The court denied the request for explanation. The prosecution struck nine more possible jurors, of which six were black. Powers objected each time, but the court overruled his objection. The jury convicted Powers on all charges. Powers appealed his conviction and argued that the prosecution’s discriminatory selection of jurors violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Ohio Constitution, and that his own race was irrelevant to the right to object. The Ohio Court of Appeals affirmed his conviction and the Supreme Court of Ohio dismissed the appeal. The petitioner sought review before the Supreme Court.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
Yes. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy delivered the opinion of the 7-2 majority. Under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, the prosecution is prohibited from excluding an unbiased and qualified juror based on the person’s race regardless of the race of the defendant. Although an individual does not have the right to sit on a jury, every citizen has the right not to be deprived of the opportunity to participate in this aspect of civil life. The Court also held that a criminal defendant has the right to raise objections on racial discrimination when excluding certain potential jurors because it could cause potential injury to the defendant. The defendant must feel that he is receiving a fair trial and that the integrity of the judicial system is upheld. Therefore the defendant, as well as the juror, has the right to eliminate racial discrimination in the courtroom and the color of his skin is irrelevant to these objections of racial discrimination.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
In keeping with the practice of several other public middle and high school principals in Providence, Rhode Island, Robert E. Lee, a middle school principal, invited a rabbi to speak at his school's graduation ceremony. Daniel Weisman's daughter, Deborah, was among the graduates. Hoping to stop the rabbi from speaking at his daughter's graduation, Weisman sought a temporary restaining order in District Court - but was denied. After the ceremony, where prayers were recited, Weisman filed for a permanent injunction barring Lee and other Providence public school officials from inviting clergy to deliver invocations and benedictions at their schools' ceremonies. When the Court of Appeals affirmed a District Court ruling against the schools, Lee appealed to the Supreme Court and was granted certiorari.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
Yes. In a 5-to-4 decision, the Court held that government involvement in this case creates "a state-sponsored and state-directed religious exercise in a public school." Such conduct conflicts with settled rules proscribing prayer for students. The school's rule creates subtle and indirect coercion (students must stand respectfully and silently), forcing students to act in ways which establish a state religion. The cornerstone principle of the Establishment Clause is that government may not compose official prayers to recite as part of a religious program carried on by government.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
Under Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution, a census must be conducted every ten years and the distribution of Representatives in Congress adjusted to provide proportional representation. The census is designed and carried out by the Secretary of Commerce before the results are forwarded to the President, who determines the number of Representatives each state will receive. In 1990, for only the second time since 1900, the census allocated employees of the Department of Defense who were stationed overseas to the states designated their "homes of record." Massachusetts claimed that this adjustment of the census shifted one Representative from Massachusetts to Washington state. They brought suit under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and the Constitution, arguing that the allocation of overseas personnel to their "homes of record" was arbitrary and capricious under the APA standards and did not meet the constitutional requirement of counting the number of people "in each State."


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
The Secretary's decision was not reviewable under the APA because it was not a "final agency action." Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, in the majority opinion, wrote that only agency decisions that complete the decision-making process and directly affect the party bring suit may be challenged under the APA. In this case the Secretary's decision resulted merely in a set of findings reported to the President that he could ask to have revised using a different formula. Also, the recommendation (and therefore the procedure used to arrive at it) did not directly affect Massachusetts; the President had to take action before the findings would affect the number of Representatives apportioned to the State. The procedure and the findings that resulted from it, therefore, was not a "final agency action" challengeable under the APA, and the actions of the President are also not challengeable under the APA.
Evaluating the Secretary's chosen procedure under Article I Section 2 of the Constitution, however, Justice O'Connor ruled that the decision to include overseas personnel of the Department of Defense was a reasonable interpretation of the Constitution's intent. "The Secretary's judgment does not hamper the underlying constitutional goal of equal representation, but, assuming that employees temporarily stationed abroad have indeed retained their ties to their home states, actually promotes equality," wrote Justice O'Connor.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
In a statewide ballot, California residents approved the addition of Article XIIIA to their State Constitution. Article XIIIA's "acquisition value" provision limited property assessment value increases to two percent, if caused by changes in ownership or new construction improvements. Article XIIIA exempted two types of transfers from this reassessment limit: first, if the principal seller is 55 or older and moved to a home of equal or lower value, and second, when a transfer occurred between parents and children. One of Article XIIIA's effects is that over time the taxes of new property owners, adjusted to reflect recent values, would be substantially higher than long-term property owner's taxes. A new property owner filed suit to challenge the state constitutional amendment.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
The Court, through Justice Blackmun, held that California's new property tax system rationally and plausibly furthered legitimate state interests in restraining increasing property taxes and preserving local neighborhood stability. The discrepancy which Article XIIIA created between new and long time property owners is warranted, because the latter had a far greater reliance interest in their property than the former. Thus, long-time property owners deserved more protection from higher property taxes than new property owners. This demonstrated a significant difference between the two property owner types. In addition, both of Article XIIIA's exemptions rationally promoted a legitimate state interest. The first exemption did not discourage older people from moving to a smaller home that is likely to better suit their smaller family and income. The second exemption aimed at preserving family unity and neighborhood stability. Accordingly, the Court held that Article XIIIA did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
After the district court held that the conditions at the Suffolk County Jail were constitutionally deficient, the Suffolk County officials and the inmates of Suffolk County Jail entered into a consent decree for construction of a new jail. In the decree, the parties agreed single-occupancy cells would be provided for pretrial inmates. During the delay of the construction, the sheriff of Suffolk County moved to modify the decree to allow double bunking in certain cells to raise the jail’s occupancy. The sheriff argued that with the increasing number of pretrial detainees and a recent court decision, there was a change in fact and in law that was required to modify the decree. The district court refused the modification because the sheriff is required to show a grievous wrong by new and unforeseen circumstances to modify the decree and that the increase of pretrial detainees was neither new nor unforeseen. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
No, Justice Byron R. White delivered the opinion of the 6-2 majority. The Court held that the grievous wrong standard does not apply to requests to modify consent decrees and that changes of conduct or conditions may be revised if necessary for future events based on a flexible standard. Under a flexible standard, the party seeking modification of an institutional reform consent decree must establish that a significant change in facts or law warrants a revision of the decree and that the proposed modification is tailored to that change of circumstances. This requirement will be satisfied if the change was unforeseen or would be detrimental to public interests without the modification.
Justice John Paul Stevens, with whom Justice Harry A. Blackmun joined, wrote a dissenting opinion in which he argued that after the institution was found by the district court to be deficient, it is the district court’s duty to command an effective remedy. In this case, the remedy was to have single-occupancy cells for pretrial detainees and it is important that the court apply a strict standard when considering modification request that undermines the central purpose of a consent decree. The modification of the consent decree should be denied.
Justice Clarence Thomas took no part in the consideration or decision.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
The pre-emption provision of the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 (ADA) prohibits states from enforcing any law relating to airline rates, route, or service. The ADA was enacted to ensure that states would not undo the anticipated benefits of federal deregulation of the airline industry. In 1987, the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) adopted Air Travel Industry Enforcement Guidelines, which govern the content and format of airline advertising and award frequent flyers and payment to passengers who voluntarily gave up their seats on overbooked flights. The Attorney General of Texas sent letters to airlines, including Trans World Airlines, notifying them of the intent to sue if they did not follow the guidelines. Trans World Airlines sued and claimed that state regulation of fare advertisements is prohibited by the ADA. The district court found in favor of Trans World Airlines and held that states cannot take any enforcement action, which would restrict any aspect of the fare advertising or operations relating to rate, routes, or services. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
Yes. Justice Antonin Scalia delivered the opinion of the 5-3 majority. The Court held that the ADA prevents the enforcement of the NAAG fare-advertising guidelines through a state’s general consumer protection. When the ADA was enacted, Congress intended to prevent the state enforcement action if it has a connection with, or references airline rates, routes, or services, including advertisements. The NAAG guidelines explicitly refer to the rates within the meaning of the ADA and would have a significant impact on the airline’s ability to market their product and upon the fares they charge.
Justice John Paul Stevens wrote a dissenting opinion in which he argued the words “relate to” in the ADA should not be given a broad meaning because it gives the ADA pre-emption provision a meaning beyond the words and the legislative history behind the enactment. Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Harry A. Blackmun joined the dissent
Justice David H. Souter took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
The Pennsylvania legislature amended its abortion control law in 1988 and 1989. Among the new provisions, the law required informed consent and a 24 hour waiting period prior to the procedure. A minor seeking an abortion required the consent of one parent (the law allows for a judicial bypass procedure). A married woman seeking an abortion had to indicate that she notified her husband of her intention to abort the fetus. These provisions were challenged by several abortion clinics and physicians. A federal appeals court upheld all the provisions except for the husband notification requirement.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
In a bitter 5-to-4 decision, the Court again reaffirmed Roe, but it upheld most of the Pennsylvania provisions. For the first time, the justices imposed a new standard to determine the validity of laws restricting abortions. The new standard asks whether a state abortion regulation has the purpose or effect of imposing an "undue burden," which is defined as a "substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion before the fetus attains viability." Under this standard, the only provision to fail the undue-burden test was the husband notification requirement. In a rare step, the opinion for the Court was crafted and authored by three justices: O'Connor, Kennedy, and Souter.
Learn more about the Supreme Court and abortion law in Body Politic, a nonpartisan Oyez resource.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
After 17 years of litigation, Mississippi's public university system remained racially divided. The state had operated legally segregated universities, but had since adopted race-neutral policies to dismantle its de jure segregated system. All students could choose which school to attend, though the choices produced nearly all white and all black institutions of higher learning. This case was decided together with that of Ayers v. Fordice.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
No. A state's duty is not discharged "until it eradicates policies and practices traceable to its prior de jure dual system that continues to foster segregation." Race-neutral admissions are not a sufficient corrective to constitutional violations of a dual system. Different admissions criteria, and different missions for university system components, may have racially discriminatory effects perpetuating the old system. The Court did not declare the present system unconstitutional, only that Mississippi had not done enough to eliminate segregation. The Justices turned the matter back to state officials -- and to the courts -- to determine what must be done to fulfill its duty under the Constitution.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
Lechmere owned and operated a large retail store in a shopping plaza. Nonemployee union organizers campaigned to organize the store employees by entering the company's parking lot and placing handbills on car windshields. Lechmere prohibited solicitation and literature distribution on its property. The union organizers persisted in their leafleting campaign despite continued objections from Lechmere. The union filed an unfair labor practice charge against Lechmere. An NLRB judge ruled in the union's favor.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
No, reasoned Justice Clarence Thomas, except in situations where inaccessibility makes communication through normal channels ineffective. There were alternatives short of trespass, such as signs, mailings, and newspaper ads. (Thomas's defense of private property rights may offer a clue to his budding jurisprudence.)


[Unknown Act > Facts]
Rose Cipollone died at 58 from lung cancer. She smoked for 42 years. Before her death, she and her husband sued several cigarette manufacturers in federal court for damages resulting from Mrs. Cipollone lung cancer. A trial court judgment of $400,000 was reserved in the U.S. Court of Appeals. The Cipollone family appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
In a complicated 7-to-2 decision, the Court held that federally mandated warnings do not bar smokers from suing manufacturers under state personal-injury laws. The justices ruled that such suits cannot be based on claims that cigarette advertising failed to warn smokers of smoking dangers. But the justices also ruled that individuals may press claims alleging that the tobacco companies made fraudulent or inaccurate statements in their advertising or that the companies conspired to mislead people about the health hazards of smoking.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
The Endangered Species Act of 1973 (S7(a)(2)) required federal agencies to consult with the Secretary of the Interior to ensure that any authorized actions did not jeopardize endangered or threatened species or critically destroy natural habitats. A 1986 amendment to the act limited it scope to actions in the United States or on the high seas. Defenders of Wildlife and other organizations dedicated to wildlife conservation filed an action seeking a declaratory judgment that the new amendment erred by providing for a geographic limit on the original law.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
No. Even if the Court were to assume that the agency-funded projects at issue threatened listed species, there was no proof that these actions would produce "actual or imminent" injuries to particular respondents who might some day wish to visit the foreign countries in question. The Court disregarded the proposed theory of "ecosystem nexus" which claimed that any person who used any part of of a "contiguous ecosystem" adversed affected by a funded activity had standing to sue.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
Respondents -- the Seattle Audubon Society, the Portland Audubon Society, and several other environmental groups -- filed two separate suits in federal district court seeking to enjoin harvesting timber in forests managed by the United States Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. The suits challenged five federal statutes. In response, Congress enacted §318 of the Department of Interior and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, which required harvesting in certain areas, while prohibiting it in others. §318 included the names of the lawsuits and specifically stated that it was enacted to address the challenges from the lawsuits. Respondents argued that §318 violated Article III of the Constitution because it directed the results of the two pending cases, a job for the judiciary, not the legislature. The district courts rejected that claim, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit consolidated the cases and reversed, holding that Congress was directing the result in pending cases without repealing or amending the underlying litigation.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
No. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for a unanimous court, reversed the Ninth Circuit and remanded. The Supreme Court held that §318 did not violate Article III because it made changes to the law by replacing the legal standards of the five challenged statutes. It did not make any findings of law or fact, or compel any results in the pending cases. The explicit reference to the cases only served to identify the statutes underlying those cases.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
On November 20, 1987, Paul Wade was found dead in his apartment with multiple stab wounds to his chest, head, and back. Forty-five hours later, David Riggins was arrested and charged with the murder. A few days after being taken into custody, Riggins complained to Dr. R. Edward Quass, the psychiatrist who treated patients in jail, that he was hearing voices. Dr. Quass prescribed the antipsychotic drug Mellaril and, when the voices did not stop, gradually increased the dosage. In January of 1988, Riggins successfully moved for determination of his competence to stand trial, and he was found to be competent. As the trial moved forward, Riggins moved to suspend his treatment with Mellaril because he planned to offer an insanity defense at trial and asserted that he had the right to show the jury his true mental state. The district court denied Riggins motion. Riggins was found guilty and sentenced to death. The Nevada Supreme Court affirmed.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
Yes. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor delivered the opinion of the 7-2 majority. The Supreme Court held that an individual has the right to freedom from an unwanted antipsychotic drug. In order for the state to administer an antipsychotic drug against the patient’s wishes, the state must establish the pressing need for the administration of the drug. Because the district court did not reach a finding on the necessity of the Mellaril, the Court held that its administration was an error that infringed on Riggins’ constitutional rights.
In Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s concurring opinion, he wrote that the Due Process Clause prohibits the state from administering unwanted psychotic drugs to a defendant in order to make the defendant competent to stand trial. He argued that, since the administration of the antipsychotic drug can significantly alter the demeanor of the defendant during the trial and on the stand, it can amount to a manipulation of evidence by the state.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a dissent where he argued that the issue of whether or not the state should have issued the antipsychotic medication without Riggins’ consent is a separate legal issue from his trial. He argued that there was no evidence that the Mellaril rendered Riggins’ trial anything less than “full and fair,” and therefore Riggins was not entitled to have his conviction reversed. Because he was found to be competent to stand trial under the influence of Mellaril, the Mellaril could not have significantly interfered with his ability to take part in his own defense. Justice Thomas also argued that, since Riggins approached the jail psychiatrist for medication because he was hearing voices, the district court did not order Riggins to take the Mellaril. Justice Antonin Scalia joined in the dissent.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
Taco Cabana, a fast food Mexican restaurant chain in San Antonio, Texas, had a specifically-designed look or “trade dress”. Two Pesos, another similar restaurant chain based in Houston, Texas, opened a few years later with a remarkably similar look. Taco Cabana sued Two Pesos for trademark infringement under the Lanham Act. Two Pesos allegedly copied Taco Cabana’s distinctive trade dress. The judge instructed the jury that trade dress must be inherently distinctive of have acquired a secondary meaning. The jury found that Taco Cabana’s trade dress was inherently distinctive, but had not acquired a secondary meaning. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed. The court rejected Two Pesos argument that a finding of no secondary meaning necessarily means the trade dress is not inherently distinctive and is not protected under the Lanham Act.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
No. Justice Byron R. White, writing for a unanimous court, affirmed the lower court's decision. The Supreme Court held that trade dress can be protected under the Lanham Act based on inherent distinctiveness even if there is no proof of a secondary meaning. Recovery is usually available for trademark infringement without a secondary meaning, and there is no persuasive reason for treating trade dress differently from other types of trademark. Requiring a secondary meaning would go against the purposes of the Lanham Act.
Justice Antonin Scalia concurred, stating that the Lanham Act and its common law counterpart were broad enough to cover trade dress. Justice John Paul Stevens concurred in the judgment, expressing that the majority’s decision was supported by stare decisis. Justice Clarence Thomas also concurred in the judgment, arguing that the common law roots of the Lanham Act justify this decision better than the majority’s reasoning.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
Through its Tax Commissioner, the state of North Dakota filed an action in state court to force the Quill Corporation, an out-of-state mail-order office equipment retailer, to charge a North Dakota use tax on Quill merchandise to be used within the state. The state court ruled in favor of Quill, grounding its decision on Bellas Hess, Inc. v. Department of Revenue of Illinois, 386 U.S. 753. In this 1967 case, the United States Supreme Court found a similar Illinois statute to be in violation of both the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution. The North Dakota Supreme Court reversed, basing its decision on a rejection of Bellas Hess in light of the "tremendous social, economic, commercial, and legal innovations" since it had been decided.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
No and No. In a majority opinion authored by Justice John Paul Stevens, the Court admitted that, over time, subsequent cases have allowed for more flexibility than Bellas Hess. Nevertheless, the Court maintained that this evolution does not suggest a rejection of Bellas Hess. The Court also determined that North Dakota's imposition of the use tax did not constitute a breach of the Due Process Clause because the Quill Corporation had sufficient contact with the state's residents and benefited from the state's tax revenue. However, it found the use tax to be unconstitutional because it interfered with interstate commerce, rendering it a violation of the Commerce Clause. Consequently, the Court reversed the North Dakota Supreme Court's decision by ruling in favor of the Quill Corporation.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
The Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management Act Amendments of 1985 required states alone or in compacts with other states to dispose of such radioactive waste within their borders. New York State and Allegany and Cortland counties were frustrated in their compliance efforts by resistance from residents to proposed radioactive waste sites and a lack of cooperation from neighboring states. New York filed suit against the federal government, questioning the authority of Congress to regulate state waste management.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
In a 6-3 decision, the Court upheld two of the three provisions of the Act under review, reasoning that Congress had the authority under the Commerce Clause to use financial rewards and access to disposal sites as incentives for state waste management. The third provision, the "take-title" qualification, stipulated that states must take legal ownership and liability for low-level waste or by the regulatory act. "Either type of federal action," wrote Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, "would 'commandeer' state governments into the service of federal regulatory purposes, and would for this reason be inconsistent with the Constitution's division of authority between federal and state governments." This last provision violated the Tenth Amendment.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
New York City's airport authority banned repetitive solicitation of money within airline terminals. Solicitation was permitted outside the terminals. The International Society for Krishna Consciousness solicits funds in public places. It challenged the regulation. A federal district court granted an injunction against the airport authority. The authority appealed.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
No. An airport terminal is not a public forum. The regulation banning such activity need only satisfy a reasonableness standard. The regulation is reasonable. Solicitators may slow the path of possible contributors, cause duress or commit fraud. Therefore, the regulation is permissible. In a related case, the Court held invalid the airport authority's ban on literature distribution in airport terminals.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
The principal focus of Alabama County Commission members is the construction and maintenance of roads. In 1987, Etowah County Commission passed the "Common Fund Resolution", combining all of the commission's funds into one county-wide budget and eliminating each commissioner's power over the distribution of funds allocated for his or her own road district. Newly elected black member, Commissioner Lawrence C. Presley, claimed that the changes in the distribution of authority were a form of racial discrimination and a violation of section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which permits a state government to alter practices related to voting only after receiving judicial preclearance. The Etowah County Commission had not received this preclearance, and neither had the Russell County Commission when, in 1979, its members instituted the "Unit System." This system transferred full authority over Russell County roads, highways, bridges, and ferries from the commissioners to the appointed county engineer. When the first 2 black commissioners were elected in Russell County, they joined Presley in filing a suit against Etowah and Russell Counties in the Federal District Court for the Middle District of Alabama. The District Court determined that preclearance was unnecessary in both 2 instances, but Presley appealed.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
No. In a majority opinion authored by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the Court determined that section 5 of the Voting Rights Act covers only changes that directly relate to voting. More specifically, the Court found that case law outlines 4 areas in which alterations require preclearance under section 5: the method of voting, the requirements for candidacy, the composition of the electorate, and the formation or elimination of an elected office. In the Court's opinion, neither the "Common Fund Resolution" nor the "Unit System" fell in any of the 4 categories. Instead, those 2 changes merely concern the "internal operation of an elected body". Thus, the judgment of the District Court was affirmed.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
Freeman, a Tennessee political campaign treasurer, challenged the constitutionality of the Tennessee Code forbidding the solicitation of votes and the display or distribution of campaign materials within 100 feet of entrances to polling facilities. On appeal from a lower court's dismissal, the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed, finding that the 100-foot ban was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court granted Burson certiorari.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
No. After subjecting Tennessee's statute to exacting scrutiny, since it constituted a facial content-based restriction on political speech in a public forum, the Court held that the statute was narrowly drafted to serve a compelling state interest. By creating a safe zone around polling sites, the statute served the state's interest in protecting its citizen's right to vote freely and effectively. Moreover, the 100-foot zone was acceptable since it was not so large as to completely block out the presence of political messages.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
Under the Rail Passenger Service Act of 1970 (RPSA), the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak) may enter into "trackage rights" agreements to use tracks owned and used by freight railroads. Section 562(d) of the act also states that Amtrak may buy tracks from private railroads, and may ask the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to condemn tracks owned by those railroads if they cannot agree on sale terms, provided that the tracks in question are "required for intercity rail passenger service." Amtrak's need for the tracks is established unless the private railroad can show either that its ability to carry out its obligations as a common carrier (that is, a transporter of public goods) will be seriously hampered or that Amtrak's needs can be met by the purchase of alternative property.
Amtrak had a "trackage rights" agreement with Boston and Maine Railroad (B & M). Amtrak claimed that it was forced to discontinue this agreement because B & M did not properly maintain its tracks. Amtrak then entered into an agreement with the Central Vermont Railroad (CV), under which it would acquire the B & M track and sell it to CV, which would take over maintenance of the track but grant "trackage rights" to Amtrak and usage rights to B & M. When B & M declined Amtrak's offer to purchase the track, Amtrak asked the ICC to condemn the track (thus allowing Amtrak to seize it). The ICC granted Amtrak's request. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, however, sent the case back to the ICC for reconsideration, because Amtrak had not demonstrated the need for ownership, just for use (demonstrated by its intent to convey the property to CV). Amtrak petitioned the appeals court to rehear the case, and while the petition was pending Congress amended the RPSA to explicitly allow Amtrak to seize property with the ICC's permission and then convey it to another party if that would further its mission. The appeals court denied rehearing, however, holding that the condemnation had been invalid because it was not "required for intercity rail passenger service."


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
Yes. In a 6-to-3 decision, the Supreme Court held that the ICC was entitled to deference and that its decision had been reasonable. In the majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that by interpreting the statute's use of "required" to mean that the track must be useful but not absolutely indispensable to Amtrak's operation, the ICC had better accommodated the underlying intention of the RPSA than the appeals court. That finding was reinforced by Congress's amendment to the act, which would only be effective under the ICC's interpretation.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
In 1990, white respondents, Thomas McCollum, William Joseph McCollum, and Ella Hampton McCollum, were charged with assaulting two black individuals. Before the criminal trial, the prosecution moved to bar the defense from using its peremptory challenges to eliminate black people from the juror pool. The term "preemptory challenge" refers to the right to reject a potential juror during jury selection without giving a reason. The trial judge denied the prosecution's motion, and, when the prosecution appealed, the Georgia Supreme Court affirmed the trial judge's decision.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
Yes. In a majority opinion authored by Justice Harry A. Blackmun, the Court found that the exercise of peremptory challenges in a racially discriminatory manner not only violates the rights of potential jurors, but also undermines the integrity of the judicial system. Since the Court also determined that a peremptory challenge did constitute state action, it found the use of peremptory challenge for the purpose of racial discrimination to be a breach of the Equal Protection Clause. Consequently, the decision of the Georgia Supreme Court was reversed.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
The Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 (AACW) provides that, in order to be reimbursed for adoption and foster care services, a state must submit a plan for the administration of those services to the federal Secretary of Health and Human Services for approval. In order to be approved, the plan must be "in effect in all" a state's political subdivisions and "be mandatory upon them," and must state that "reasonable efforts will be made" to prevent removal of children from their homes and to facilitate reunification of families where removal has occurred. Several children in the Illinois foster care program brought suit against the Director and the Guardianship Administrator of the Illinois program under 42 U.S.C. 1983, which provides private individuals a right to sue for "deprivation of any rights ... secured by [federal] laws." They charged that Illinois had failed to make reasonable efforts to preserve and reunite families, and that it was required to do so by the AACW. The Director and Guardianship Administrator argued that the children had no standing to sue because the AACW did not create substantive rights that had to be reinforced, but merely stated what contents an administrative plan needed to have in order to receive approval. The federal District Court sided with the children, and the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
No. In a 7-to-2 decision, the Supreme Court held that the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 only required that a state have a plan for the administration of adoption and foster care programs in order to receive federal reimbursement, not that the plan be correctly carried out. The language of the statute requiring that the plan be "in effect in all" political subdivisions of the state meant only that the plan had to apply to all of them, not that they were actually required to carry it out. The Secretary of Health and Human Services could reasonably withhold approval of a plan if it was clear that the plan would not be applied, but nothing in the Act suggested that Congress had intended to create a private right to sue for the enforcement of the plan.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
In the Illinois judicial system, the jury chosen to determine a defendant's guilt or innocence also sentenced the defendant. And, the trial court, not the attorneys, performed voir dire, which involves questioning potential jurors during jury selection to determine their ability to be impartial. Before Derrick Morgan's capital murder trial, he requested that the court ask the potential jurors whether they would automatically sentence him to the death penalty upon conviction. The trial court denied Morgan's request, and he was convicted and sentenced to death. When he appealed, the Illinois Supreme Court affirmed the trial court's decision, Morgan's conviction, and his sentence.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
Yes. In a majority opinion authored by Justice Byron R. White, the Court noted that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the impartial jury requirement of the Sixth Amendment, in combination, indicate that the criminally accused have a right to an impartial jury. It found that a juror who would automatically vote for the death penalty in criminal sentencing would be prejudiced. The Court also concluded that, in order to detect this prejudice, an adequate voir dire is necessary. Therefore, an adequate voir dire would include a question to determine whether a juror would automatically vote for the death penalty, upon request. Thus, the decision of the Illinois State Supreme Court was reversed.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
Keith Hudson, a Louisiana inmate, claimed that he was beaten by Marvin Woods and Jack McMillian, two prison guards, while their supervisor, Arthur Mezo, watched. Hudson sued the guards in Federal District Court under 42 U.S.C. 1983, which allows individuals to bring suit for the "deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution." Hudson argued that they had violated his Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. The District Court ruled that the guards had used force when there was no need to do so, violating the Eighth Amendment, and that Hudson was therefore entitled to damages. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, however, finding that an inmate must demonstrate "significant injury" when he claims that his Eighth Amendment rights have been violated by the use of excessive force.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
No. In a 6-to-3 decision, the Supreme Court held that the degree of injury suffered by an inmate is one of several important factors in an Eighth Amendment claim of cruel and unusual punishment, but that the absence of "significant injury" alone does not mean his rights have not been violated. Instead, the Court should consider whether the punishment inflicted was malicious and sadistic. "When prison officials maliciously and sadistically use force to cause harm, contemporary standards of decency are always violated," Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in the majority opinion. "This is true whether or not significant injury is evident. Otherwise, the Eighth Amendment would permit any physical punishment, no matter how diabolic or inhuman, inflicting less than some arbitrary quantity of injury. Such a result would have been as unacceptable to the drafters of the Eighth Amendment as it is today."


[Unknown Act > Facts]
Several abortion clinics sued to prevent Jayne Bray and other anti-abortion protesters from conducting demonstrations at clinics in Washington, D.C. The clinics claimed that the protesters had violated 42 U.S.C. 1985(3), which prohibits conspiracies to deprive "any person or class of persons of the equal protection of the laws, or of equal privileges and immunities under the laws." The protesters had sought to deny women their "right to abortion" and their right to interstate travel, the clinics argued. The District Court agreed, holding that Bray and others, by blocking access to the clinics, had conspired to deprive women seeking abortions of their right to interstate travel. The District Court also ruled for the clinics on state law trespassing and public nuisance claims, ordering the protesters to stop trespassing on or obstructing access to clinics. Finally, the District Court ordered the protesters to pay the clinics' attorney's fees and costs on the 1985(3) claim.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
No. In a 5-to-4 decision, the Supreme Court held that the protesters had not violated section 1985(3) by obstructing access to the abortion clinics. Justice Antonin Scalia, in the majority opinion, wrote that under the Court's decision in Griffin v. Breckenridge, 403 U.S. 88, there must be a "class-based, invidiously discriminatory animus [underlying] the conspirators' action" for it to violate 1985(3). The clinics' claim that the protesters had demonstrated "animus" toward women as a class was unfounded because the demonstrations were not directed at women but rather were intended to protect the victims of abortion, stop its practice, and reverse its legalization. Opposition to abortion cannot reasonably be presumed to reflect gender-based intent, Justice Scalia wrote, because there are common and respectable reasons for opposing abortion other than a derogatory view of women.
In addition to holding that the protesters did not exercise discriminatory animus, Scalia also addressed the specific rights on which the clinics based their arguments. The right to interstate travel, Scalia pointed out, was not affected here because the protests were carried out entirely within the District of Columbia and were not aimed specifically at interstate travelers. Nor was the "right to abortion" implicated, he wrote, because that right was merely one to be free of governmental interference in the decision. The protesters, acting as private individuals, could not possibly violate that right.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
Before the Child Protection Act of 1984 rendered it illegal, Keith Jacobson, the petitioner, purchased a magazine including photographs of nude minors. In 1985, government agencies began investigating Jacobson's interest in child pornography. Over the course of about 2 1⁄2 years, they sent him mailings from 5 fictitious organizations and one non-existent pen pal all promoting sexual liberation and challenging government censorship. After Jacobson was somewhat responsive, a government agency attempted to sting him by selling him child pornography which he purchased, resulting in his arrest and conviction. The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
No. In a majority decision authored by Justice Byron R. White, the Court determined that, the prosecution was unable to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Jacobson was inclined to commit the criminal act of purchasing child pornography independent of government interference. Doubt stems from the fact that government agencies may have actually encouraged Jacobson to break the law in their effort to prosecute him. Since the Court found that the prosecution failed, the decision of the Court of Appeals and Jacobson's conviction were reversed.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
In 1981, Argentina instituted a foreign exchange insurance contract program (FEIC), under which it effectively assumed the risk of currency depreciation in cross-border transactions. When Argentina could not cover the FEIC contracts, it issued "Bonods," which provided for repayment in U.S. dollars through transfer on the market in one of several locations. Subsequently, when Argentina concluded that it lacked sufficient foreign exchange to retire the Bonods, it unilaterally extended the time for payment and offered bondholders substitute instruments as a means of rescheduling the debts. Ultimately, two Panamanian corporations and a Swiss bank brought a breach-of-contract action in Federal District Court. The court denied Argentina's motion to dismiss. In affirming, the Court of Appeals ruled that the District Court had jurisdiction under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA), which subjects foreign states to suit in American courts for acts taken "in connection with a commercial activity" that have "a direct effect in the United States."


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
Yes. In a unanimous opinion delivered by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Court held that the District Court properly asserted jurisdiction under the FSIA. The Court reasoned that the issuance of the Bonods was a "commercial activity" and that the rescheduling of the maturity dates on those instruments was taken "in connection with" that activity because Argentina had acted as a private player within a market and not as a regulator of that market. Moreover, the Court concluded that the unilateral rescheduling of the Bonods had a "direct effect in the United States" because Argentina had designated their accounts in New York as the place of payment and had made some interest payments into those accounts before announcing that it was rescheduling the payments.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
During Randall D. White’s trial on charges related to a sexual assault of a 4-year-old girl, Illinois state prosecutors twice-attempted to call the child, who was by then five years old, as a witness, but each time she experienced emotional difficulty and left the stand without testifying. The trial court then allowed the admission of testimony by the girl’s babysitter, mother, emergency room nurse, doctor and an investigating officer that recounted statements she made describing the crime. This testimony was allowed into evidence under state-law hearsay exceptions for spontaneous declarations and statements made in the course of a medical examination. The jury subsequently convicted White. On appeal, the Illinois Appellate Court rejected White’s claims that the introduction of the out-of-court statements violated his right to confront and cross-examine witnesses under the Sixth Amendment and affirmed the conviction. The Illinois Supreme Court denied discretionary review of the case.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
No. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist delivered the opinion of the 9-0 majority. The Court held that the Confrontation Clause does not require that a declarant be produced at trial or found unavailable before his out-of-court statements may be admitted into evidence. Instead, when the statements fall within a “firmly-rooted” exception to the hearsay rule, they satisfy the Confrontation Clause. Statements made in certain contexts carry special guarantees of reliability and trustworthiness, such as when the prospect of misdiagnosis or mistreatment deters a declarant from making false statements while obtaining medical treatment. Consequently, the Court held that cross-examination does not aid the truth-finding process with respect to these types of statements as much as it might for out-of-court statements that do not come under an exception to the hearsay rule.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote an opinion concurring in part and concurring the judgment in which he urged that the Confrontation Clause be applied more narrowly and only to extrajudicial statements contained in formalized testimonial materials, such as affidavits, depositions, or confessions. According to Justice Thomas, the Court’s interpretation of the Confrontation Clause as permitting out-of-court statements that fall within a “firmly-established” hearsay exception does not comport with the text of the Sixth Amendment or with the history of extending cross-examination rights to defendants. Justice Antonin Scalia joined in the opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
Plaintiffs filed two state-law tort actions in New Hampshire state courts, alleging that one of them had contracted AIDS from a transfusion of contaminated blood during surgery. The second action was brought against the Red Cross after plaintiffs discovered that it had supplied the tainted blood. Before the state court could decide a motion to consolidate the cases, the Red Cross invoked the federal removal statute, 28 U.S.C. Section 1441, to remove the second suit to federal court. The district court rejected the plaintiffs' motion to remand the case to state court, holding that the Red Cross' charter provision allowing it to "sue and be sued in courts of law and equity, State or Federal, within the jurisdiction of the United States," 36 U.S.C. Section 2, conferred original jurisdiction on the federal district court.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
Yes. A congressional charter's "sue and be sued" provision confers federal-court jurisdiction if, but only if, it specifically mentions the federal courts. The Red Cross Charter provision does specifically mention the federal courts. This holding leaves the jurisdiction of the federal courts well within the Article III limits, because the Court has consistently held that Article III's "arising under" jurisdiction is broad enough to authorize Congress to confer federal-court jurisdiction over actions involving federally chartered corporations.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
In 1986, Lucas bought two residential lots on the Isle of Palms, a South Carolina barrier island. He intended to build single-family homes as on the adjacent lots. In 1988, the state legislature enacted a law which barred Lucas from erecting permanent habitable structures on his land. The law aimed to protect erosion and destruction of barrier islands. Lucas sued and won a large monetary judgment. The state appealed.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
Yes. In a 6-to-2 decision, the Court relied on the trial court's finding that Lucas's lots had been rendered valueless by the state law. "[W]hen the owner of real property has been called upon to sacrifice all economically beneficial uses in the name of the common good...he has suffered a taking."


[Unknown Act > Facts]
In 1969, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia ordered the DeKalb County School System (DCSS) to eliminate its previously legal racial segregation and its inequitable byproducts under judicial control. However, in 1986, DCSS officials filed a motion, intending for the District Court to declare the DCSS officially desegregated and withdraw supervision. Green v. School Board of New Kent County, outlines 6 categories in which a school district should achieve desegregation, and the District Court found that the DCSS was successful in 4 of these categories. Consequently, the court decided to relinquish control over the DCSS in these 4 areas, while it maintained control and mandated further improvements in the areas in which segregation still existed. Both the respondents, black schoolchildren and their parents, and the petitioners, the DCSS officials, appealed the District Court's decision, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed it. The Court of Appeals argued that the District Court should have authority over the DCSS until it is fully desegregated in all 6 categories for several years.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
Yes and No. In a unanimous decision authored by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the Court found that a district court must only maintain control over a school system in the categories in which it has failed to abide by its court-ordered desegregation plan. The Court argued that this incremental approach provides district courts with a systematic and orderly means to their ultimate goal: to fully withdraw supervision. In addition, it allows the district court to focus more attention and resources where they are needed most. In compliance with the Court's determination, it reversed the decision of the Court of Appeals.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey banned the distribution of flyers, brochures, pamphlets and other printed material at its airport terminals. Members of a religious group wanted to perform a ritual involving the distibution of literature at these airports. The group challenged the regulation on free expression and and free exercise grounds of the First Amendment.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
In a short per curiam opinion, the court held 5 to 4 that the ban on literature distribution violated the Free Speech Clause. (A related case, also Int. Soc. for Krishna Consciousness v. Lee, 505 U.S. 672, addressed a ban on the solicitation of funds.)


[Unknown Act > Facts]
Several teenagers allegedly burned a crudely fashioned cross on a black family's lawn. The police charged one of the teens under a local bias-motivated criminal ordinance which prohibits the display of a symbol which "arouses anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender." The trial court dismissed this charge. The state supreme court reversed. R.A.V. appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
Yes. In a 9-to-0 vote, the justices held the ordinance invalid on its face because "it prohibits otherwise permitted speech solely on the basis of the subjects the speech addresses." The First Amendment prevents government from punishing speech and expressive conduct because it disapproves of the ideas expressed. Under the ordinance, for example, one could hold up a sign declaring all anti-semites are bastards but not that all Jews are bastards. Government has no authority "to license one side of a debate to fight freestyle, while requiring the other to follow the Marquis of Queensbury Rules."


[Unknown Act > Facts]
To keep criminals from profiting from crimes by selling their stories, New York State's 1977 "Son of Sam" law ordered that proceeds from such deals be turned over to the New York State Crime Victims Board. The Board was to deposit the money into escrow accounts which victims could later claim through civil suits. In 1987 the Board ordered Henry Hill, a former gangster who sold his story to Simon & Schuster, to turn over his payments from a book deal.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
Yes. The Court concluded that "New York has singled out speech on a particular subject for a financial burden that it places on no other speech and no other income." This discrimination could only be justified if the state could show "that its regulation is necessary to serve a compelling state interest and is narrowly drawn to achieve that end" (Arkansas Writers' Project, Inc. v. Ragland, 481 U.S. 221, 231 (1987)). The Board failed to explain why victims' compensation had to come from the criminals' storytelling rather than other assets.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
The Board of Commissioners for Forsyth County enacted an ordinance that permitted the county administrator to charge a fee of not more than $1,000 per day for a permit to hold a parade, assembly, or demonstration on public property in the county. The law allowed the administrator to adjust the fee to correspond with the estimated cost of maintaining public order during the activity. In January 1989, The Nationalist Movement (Movement) applied for a permit to hold a rally on the courthouse steps in Cumming, Georgia, to protest the federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. The county charged $100 for the permit, but that amount that did not include a calculation for expected law enforcement expenses during the rally. The Movement did not pay the fee and did not hold the rally; instead the Movement sued the county in federal district court and challenged its authority to interfere with the Movement’s free speech and assembly rights. The district court found that the county administrator did not unconstitutionally apply the ordinance to the Movement’s permit application because the fee was based solely on content-neutral criteria such as the costs of processing the application. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed and held that the permit fee of up to $1,000 a day exceeded the constitutional requirement that governments charge only a nominal fee for using public forums.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
Yes. Justice Harry A. Blackmun delivered the opinion for the 5-4 majority. The Court held that the ordinance violated the free speech guarantees of the First and Fourteenth Amendments because it contained no reasonable or definite standards to guide the county administrator’s calculation of permit fees. Additionally, the ordinance required the administrator to examine the speech’s content to assess the likelihood of public hostility to the message and adjust the fee accordingly to account for security and law enforcement costs. In the Court’s view, a nominal fee lower than $1000 could not save the ordinance from the constitutional infirmities it found.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote a dissent in which he disagreed with the argument that the Constitution limits a parade license fee to a nominal amount and argued that the Court should have remanded the case to determine the scope of the ordinance and how it was administered. Justice Byron R. White, Justice Antonin Scalia, and Justice Clarence Thomas joined the dissenting opinion.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
Andrew Hill, a teacher at North Gwinnett High School, sexually harassed Christine Franklin throughout her 10th grade year. Franklin reported the harassment to teachers and school district administrators, but the administration did nothing. They also encouraged Franklin to refrain from pressing charges. Hill resigned in 1988 on the condition that all matters pending against him were dropped. After Hill’s resignation the school closed its investigation.
Franklin brought this action against the school district under Title IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for failing to take action against Hill. The district court dismissed the suit, holding that Title IX did not authorize an award for damages. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit affirmed.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
Yes. Justice Byron R. White wrote the Court's unanimous decision, holding that monetary damages are available under Title IX because there is a presumption that any appropriate relief is available to remedy the violation of a federal right. In this case, back pay and prospective relief were not sufficient remedies. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a special concurrence, stating that when causes of action are judicially implied, it is proper to imply limitations on the remedies for those actions as well.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
In 1980, Marc Gilbert Doggett was indicted in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida on federal drug charges. When Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents went to his home to arrest him, they found he had left for Colombia four days earlier. The DEA later found out that Doggett was in custody in Panama on unrelated charges. While the Panamanian government promised to expel Doggett back to the United States after the proceedings in Panama were over, Doggett was allowed to continue on to Colombia. The DEA agent in charge did not follow up on the case and Doggett reentered the United States without issue in 1982 where he lived openly under his own name and in accordance with the law. No one looked into Doggett’s whereabouts, but in 1988 a random credit check of individuals with outstanding warrants revealed his place of residence.
After being arrested, Doggett moved to dismiss the indictment, arguing that the government’s failure to prosecute him earlier violated his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial. A federal magistrate found that the length of time between indictment and arrest was presumptively prejudicial, but recommended dismissal of Doggett’s motion because he did not show actual prejudice. The district court followed the magistrate’s recommendation. Doggett then entered a conditional guilty plea, allowing him to appeal the subsequent conviction on the speedy trial claim. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit affirmed.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
No, No. Justice David H. Souter, writing for a 5-4 majority, reversed and remanded. The Supreme Court held that the government’s egregious failure to locate and prosecute Doggett warranted relief even without showing actual prejudice. Doggett was unaware of the indictment prior to be arrested 8 1⁄2 years later, so he could not be penalized for failing to raise the speedy trial defense earlier.
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor dissented, arguing that the possibility of prejudice is not enough to prove that the right to a speedy trial has been violated. Justice Clarence Thomas also dissented, arguing that the right to a speedy trial was meant to prevent oppressive incarceration and the anxiety accompanying public accusation. Because Doggett was never incarcerated and had no knowledge of the charges against him until his arrest, neither of those purposes were served by this decision.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
Nineteen States and many private plaintiffs filed complaints alleging that the defendants -- domestic primary insurers, trade associations, and a reinsurance broker, along with London-based as well as domestic reinsurers -- violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. Section 1, by engaging in various conspiracies aimed at forcing certain other primary insurers to change the terms of their standard domestic commercial general liability insurance policies. After the actions were consolidated for litigation, the district court granted the defendants' motion to dismiss, holding that the conduct alleged fell within the grant of antitrust immunity contained in Section 2(b) of the McCarran-Ferguson Act, 15 U.S.C. Section 1012(b), and that none of the conduct amounted to a "boycott" within the meaning of the Section 3(b), 15 U.S.C. Section 1013(b), exemption to that grant of immunity. The court of appeals reversed.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
Yes to the first; no to the second. The Court, speaking through Justice Antonin Scalia, held that a boycott exists when, in order to coerce a target into certain terms on one transaction, parties refuse to engage in other, unrelated transactions with the target. On most counts, the plaintiffs' allegations, construed favorably, described boycotts. Justice David H. Souter wrote for the Court on jurisdiction over foreign conduct, holding that it was appropriate in this case because there is no true conflict between domestic and foreign law. That is, because the London reinsurers can comply with both British law and the Sherman Act, international comity does not counsel against exercising subject matter jurisdiction in this case.


[Unknown Act > Facts]
On November 9, 1989, while exiting an apartment building with a history of cocaine trafficking, Timothy Dickerson spotted police officers and turned to walk in the opposite direction. In response, the officers commanded Dickerson to stop and proceeded to frisk him. An officer discovered a lump in Dickerson's jacket pocket, and, upon further tactile investigation, formed the belief that it was cocaine. The officer reached into Dickerson's pocket and confirmed that the lump was in fact a small bag of cocaine. Consequently, Dickerson was charged with possession of a controlled substance. He requested that the cocaine be excluded from evidence, but the trial court denied his request and he was found guilty. Minnesota Court of Appeals reversed, and the State Supreme Court affirmed the appellate court's decision.


[Unknown Act > Conclusion]
Yes and No. In a unanimous opinion authored by Justice Byron R. White, the Court recalled that a police officer may seize contraband when it is in plain sight, and "its incriminating character is immediately apparent". It held that instances in which an officer uses the sense of sight to discover illegal goods are analogous to those involving the sense of touch. The Court also reasoned that the tactile detection of contraband during a lawful pat-down search does not constitute any further invasion of privacy, therefore warrantless seizure was permissible. The Court also concluded that the police officer frisking Dickerson stepped outside the boundaries outlined in Terry v. Ohio which requires a protective pat-down search to involve only what is necessary for the detection of weapons. In fact the officer was already aware that Dickerson's jacket pocket did not contain a weapon, when he detected the cocaine through further tactile investigation.