Supreme Court Cases - AP US Government and Politics



Supreme Court Cases

Federalism

Our form of Constitutionalism maintains that the legitimacy of government is centered on an agreement that the people will support a government so long as it is limited by federalism, separation of powers, and individual rights.

Commerce

McCullough v. Maryland (1819)

In 1816, Congress created a 2nd National Bank despite the lack of explicit Constitutional empowerment. The state of Maryland attempted to tax the bank and the bank refused to pay. This raised the question of whether Congress really had the power to create the bank in the first place.

Chief Justice John Marshall argued that a central bank was necessary for national security (as a means of paying soldiers across the country). In addition, Congress can use the Necessary and Proper Clause to establish a national bank because Article I, Section 8 includes the right to lay and collect taxes, borrow money and regulate commerce.

→ →This creates a massive expansion of Congressional power ← ←

Article I, Section 8 also says that Congress has the ability to regulate commerce “among the states”. This has led to massive debate over what “among the states” means. Major cases include…

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Gibbons v. Ogden (1824)

Debate over which layer of government can grant steamboat monopolies. It was decided that in cases that involve commerce between the states (interstate commerce) the federal government is supreme. The federal government have power to improve commerce through subsidies, land grants, building roads, etc.

But when the Congress wanted to regulate local economic conditions (minimum wages, right to regulate unions, no child labor) it was restricted because the factories, workers and often the goods did not cross state lines so it was not considered interstate commerce.

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Heart of Atlanta Motel v. US (1964)

The court held that Congress could ban racial discrimination in a privately owned motel under the commerce clause because many of its clients were from out of state and the hotel was near two major interstate highways.

At the same time that the courts were allowing for dramatic expansion of the Commerce Clause, they were also allowing the federal government to start attaching strings to federal money to states.

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US v. Lopez (1995)

Debate over whether the 1990 Gun-Free School Zones Act, forbidding individuals from knowingly carrying a gun in a school zone, was unconstitutional because it exceeded the power of Congress to legislate under the Commerce Clause.

The government's principal argument was that the possession of a firearm in an educational environment would most likely lead to a violent crime, which in turn would affect the general economic condition in two ways. First, because violent crime causes harm and creates expense, it raises insurance costs, which are spread throughout the economy; and second, by limiting the willingness to travel in the area perceived to be unsafe. The government also argued that the presence of firearms within a school would be seen as dangerous, resulting in students' being scared and disturbed; this would, in turn, inhibit learning; and this, in turn, would lead to a weaker national economy since education is clearly a crucial element of the nation's financial health.

The Supreme Court held that the federal Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990, which banned possession of handguns near schools, was unconstitutional because it did not have a substantial impact on interstate commerce. After the Lopez decision, the act was amended to specifically only apply to guns that had been moved via interstate commerce.

The Court, however, found these arguments to create a dangerous slippery slope: what would prevent the federal government from then regulating any activity that might lead to violent crime, regardless of its connection to interstate commerce, because it imposed social costs? What would prevent Congress from regulating any activity that might bear on a person's economic productivity?

The Court stressed "enumerated powers" that limit federal power in order to maintain "a distinction between what is truly national and what is truly local." Lopez therefore limited the scope of the Commerce Clause to exclude activity that was not directly economic in nature, even if there were indirect economic consequences. Lopez was the first significant limitation on the Commerce Clause powers of Congress in 53 years.

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US v. Morrison (2000)

Does Congress have the authority to enact the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 under either the Commerce Clause or Fourteenth Amendment?

The verdict invalidated the section of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) of 1994 that gave victims of gender-motivated violence the right to sue their attackers in federal court, although program funding remains unaffected. It held that Congress lacked authority, under either the Commerce Clause or the Fourteenth Amendment, to enact this section. The Court held that Congress lacked the authority to enact a statute under the Commerce Clause or the Fourteenth Amendment since the statute did not regulate an activity that substantially affected interstate commerce nor did it redress harm caused by the state. Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote for the Court that [i]f the allegations here are true, no civilized system of justice could fail to provide [Brzonkala] a remedy for the conduct of...Morrison. But under our federal system that remedy must be provided by the Commonwealth of Virginia, and not by the United States."

The Court explained that the need to distinguish between economic activities that directly and those that indirectly affect interstate commerce was due to "the concern that we expressed in Lopez that Congress might use the Commerce Clause to completely obliterate the Constitution’s distinction between national and local authority."

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Federal Money to States

1. Grants-in-Aid

• Until the late 1930s the federal government could not spend money for purposes not specifically authorized in the Constitution and these grants were away around this

• States began to see federal grants as a way to provide services to the public and became very dependent on them (usually these included matching funds from state or local governments)

• Grants were attractive to states because

o They were a way to use federal budget surpluses (19th and early 20th centuries)- federal income tax increased amount of money available

o Appeared as free money to state officials, who did not have to be responsible for federal taxation

• Block grants grew more slowly than categorical because of political coalitions (distrust of state government by some political groups caused them to prefer categorical grants because they gave the national government more power)

• Revenue sharing grants were wasteful because the money never actually went to those who actually needed it most

• Increased dependency on grants increased rivalries among states

• Types of grants include:

o Categorical: federal grants to state or local governments that are to be used for specific programs or projects

o Block: could be used for general purposes and had few restrictions (most states preferred these to categorical)

o Revenue Sharing: required no matching funds and could be spend on almost any governmental purpose (distributed by statistical formula, ended in 1986)

2. Mandates

● State or local governments had to obey mandates and apply funding

specifically where intended (i.e. civil rights, environmental protection)

● Many are difficult to implement, expensive and hard for states to obey

Can come from controversial court decisions (state prisons, school

desegregation)

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