Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 17 U.S. 518 (1819), was a landmark decision in United States corporate law from the United States Supreme Court dealing with the application of the Contracts Clause of the United States Constitution to private corporations. The case arose when the president of Dartmouth College was deposed by its trustees, leading to the New Hampshire legislature attempting to force the college to become a public institution and thereby place the ability to appoint trustees in the hands of the governor of New Hampshire. The Supreme Court upheld the sanctity of the original charter of the college, which pre-dated the creation of the State.
Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, 118 U.S. 394 (1886), is a corporate law case of the United States Supreme Court concerning taxation of railroad properties. The case is most notable for a headnote stating that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment grants constitutional protections to corporations.
Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protects the liberty of married couples to buy and use contraceptives without government restriction. The case involved a Connecticut "Comstock law" that prohibited any person from using "any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception". The court held that the statute was unconstitutional, and that "the clear effect of [the Connecticut law ...] is to deny disadvantaged citizens ... access to medical assistance and up-to-date information in respect to proper methods of birth control." By a vote of 7–2, the Supreme Court invalidated the law on the grounds that it violated the "right to marital privacy", establishing the basis for the right to privacy with respect to intimate practices. This and other cases view the right to privacy as a right to "protect[ion] from governmental intrusion".
Stanley Forman Reed was a noted American attorney who served as United States Solicitor General from 1935 to 1938 and as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1938 to 1957.
Morrison Remick "Mott" Waite was an attorney, judge, and politician from Ohio. He served as the seventh chief justice of the United States from 1874 until his death in 1888. During his tenure, the Waite Court took a narrow interpretation of federal authority related to laws and amendments that were enacted during the Reconstruction Era to expand the rights of freedmen and protect them from attacks by white-supremacy groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.
Stephen Johnson Field was an American jurist. He was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from May 20, 1863, to December 1, 1897, the second longest tenure of any justice. Prior to this appointment, he was the fifth Chief Justice of California.
Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 447 U.S. 303 (1980), was a United States Supreme Court case dealing with whether living organisms can be patented. Writing for a five-justice majority, Chief Justice Warren E. Burger held that human-made bacterium could be patented under the patent laws of the United States because such an invention constituted a "manufacture" or "composition of matter". Justice William J. Brennan Jr., along with Justices Byron White, Thurgood Marshall, and Lewis F. Powell Jr., dissented from the Court's ruling, arguing that because Congress had not expressly authorized the patenting of biological organisms, the Court should not extend patent law to cover them.
The University of Connecticut School of Law is a public law school associated with the University of Connecticut and located in Hartford, Connecticut. It is the only public law school in Connecticut and one of only four in New England. The school was ranked 58th overall and 12th for its part-time law program in the 2022 Best Law Schools ranking by U.S. News & World Report. The law school has 488 JD students and a student:faculty ratio of 5:1.
The McCarran–Ferguson Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1011-1015, is a United States federal law that exempts the business of insurance from most federal regulation, including federal antitrust laws to a limited extent. The McCarran–Ferguson Act was passed by the 79th Congress in 1945 after the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. South-Eastern Underwriters Association that the federal government could regulate insurance companies under the authority of the Commerce Clause in the U.S. Constitution and that the federal antitrust laws applied to the insurance industry.
Lovell v. City of Griffin, 303 U.S. 444 (1938), is a United States Supreme Court case. This case was remarkable in its discussion of the requirement of persons to seek government sanction to distribute religious material. In this particular case, the Supreme Court ruled it was not constitutional for a city to require such sanction.
Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458 (1938), was a United States Supreme Court case, in which the petitioner, Johnson, had been convicted in federal court of feloniously possessing, uttering, and passing counterfeit money in a trial where he had not been represented by an attorney but instead by himself. Johnson filed for habeas corpus relief, claiming that his Sixth Amendment right to counsel had been violated, but he was denied by both a federal district court and the court of appeals.
Paul v. Virginia, 75 U.S. 168 (1869), is a U.S. corporate law decision by the United States Supreme Court. It held that a corporation is not a citizen within the meaning of the Privileges and Immunities Clause. Of greater consequence, the Court further held that "issuing a policy of insurance is not a transaction of commerce," effectively removing the business of insurance beyond the United States Congress's legislative reach.
John Catron was an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1837 to 1865, during the Taney Court.
Willis Van Devanter was an American lawyer who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1911 to 1937. He was a staunch conservative and was regarded as a part of the Four Horsemen, the conservative block which dominated the Supreme Court during the 1930s.
Oliver Ellsworth was an American lawyer, judge, politician, and diplomat. He was a framer of the United States Constitution, a United States Senator from Connecticut, and the third chief justice of the United States. Additionally, Ellsworth received 11 electoral votes in the 1796 presidential election.
Lambert v. Yellowley, 272 U.S. 581 (1926), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that reaffirmed the National Prohibition Act's limitation on the dispensation of alcoholic medicines. The five-to-four decision, written by Justice Louis D. Brandeis, affirmed the dismissal of a suit in which New York City physician Samuel Lambert sought to prevent Edward Yellowley, the acting federal prohibition director, from enforcing the Prohibition Act so as to preclude him from prescribing alcoholic medicines. The decision affirmed the police powers of the individual states, as well as the power of the Necessary and Proper Clause of the United States Constitution, which was cited in upholding the Prohibition Act's limitations as a necessary and proper implementation of the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Electric Bond Share Company v. Securities & Exchange Commission, 303 U.S. 419 (1938), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court upheld the constitutionality of the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935.
