List of United States Supreme Court military case law

Last updated

This is a list of Supreme Court of the United States cases in the areas of military justice, national security, and other aspects of war.

Contents

This list is a list solely of United States Supreme Court decisions about applying law related to war. Not all Supreme Court decisions are ultimately influential and, as in other fields, not all important decisions are made at the Supreme Court level. Many federal courts issue rulings that are significant or come to be influential, but those are outside the scope of this list.

General

19th century

20th century

21st century

Freedom of Information Act

Liability

Reservists

Selective Service and draft

State secrets privilege

Veterans

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">United States Secretary of Defense</span> Leader of the United States armed forces following the president

The United States secretary of defense (SecDef) is the head of the United States Department of Defense, the executive department of the U.S. Armed Forces, and is a high-ranking member of the federal cabinet. The secretary of defense's position of command and authority over the military is second only to that of the president of the United States, who is the commander-in-chief. This position corresponds to what is generally known as a defense minister in many other countries. The secretary of defense is appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate, and is by custom a member of the Cabinet and by law a member of the National Security Council.

<i>Ex parte Merryman</i> United States legal case

Ex parte Merryman, 17 F. Cas. 144 (No. 9487), was a controversial U.S. federal court case that arose out of the American Civil War. It was a test of the authority of the President to suspend "the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus" under the Constitution's Suspension Clause, when Congress was in recess and therefore unavailable to do so itself. More generally, the case raised questions about the ability of the executive branch to decline to enforce judicial decisions when the executive believes them to be erroneous and harmful to its own legal powers.

Ex parte Garland, 71 U.S. 333 (1866), was an important United States Supreme Court case involving the disbarment of former Confederate officials.

Rasul v. Bush, 542 U.S. 466 (2004), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court in which the Court held that foreign nationals held in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp could petition federal courts for writs of habeas corpus to review the legality of their detention. The Court's 6–3 judgment on June 28, 2004, reversed a D.C. Circuit decision which had held that the judiciary has no jurisdiction to hear any petitions from foreign nationals held in Guantanamo Bay.

Rumsfeld v. Padilla, 542 U.S. 426 (2004), was a United States Supreme Court case, in which José Padilla, an American citizen, sought habeas corpus relief against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, as a result of his detention by the military as an "unlawful combatant."

Johnson v. Eisentrager, 339 U.S. 763 (1950), was a major decision of the US Supreme Court, where it decided that US courts had no jurisdiction over German war criminals held in a US-administered prison in Germany. The prisoners had at no time been on American sovereign territory.

The following is a complete list of cases decided by the United States Supreme Court organized by volume of the United States Reports in which they appear. This is a list of volumes of U.S. Reports, and the links point to the contents of each individual volume. Each volume was edited by one of the Reporters of Decisions of the Supreme Court. As of the beginning of the October 2019 Term, there were 574 bound volumes of the U.S. Reports. There were another 14 volumes worth of opinions available as "slip opinions", which are preliminary versions of the opinion published on the Supreme Court's website.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Non-Detention Act</span> US federal law

The Non-Detention Act of 1971 is a United States statute enacted to repeal portions of the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950, specifically Title II, the "Emergency Detention Act". The law repealed the Emergency Detention Act of 1950 provisioning the United States Attorney General with powers for detention of anyone in the US deemed to be a threat to the national security of the United States. The 64 Stat. 1019 statute was codified within Title 50 War and National Defense as 50 U.S.C. ch. 23, subch. II §§ 811-826.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">United States constitutional criminal procedure</span> United States constitutional criminal procedure

The United States Constitution contains several provisions regarding the law of criminal procedure.

United States ex rel. Toth v. Quarles, 350 U.S. 11 (1955), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that expanded the rights of citizens to civilian trials, holding that an ex-serviceman cannot be court-martialed for crimes alleged during his military service.