The Eleventh Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed by Congress on March 4, 1794, and ratified by the states on February 7, 1795. The Eleventh Amendment restricts the ability of individuals to bring suit against states in federal court.
The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal government and each state from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." It was ratified on February 3, 1870, as the third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments.
A Congressional power of enforcement is included in a number of amendments to the United States Constitution. The language "The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation" is used, with slight variations, in Amendments XIII, XIV, XV, XIX, XXIII, XXIV, and XXVI. The variations in the pertinent language are as follows: The Thirteenth Amendment leaves out the word "the", the Fourteenth Amendment states "The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article." In addition to the amendments above, the Eighteenth Amendment states "The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."
Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court held that the Constitution of the United States was not meant to include American citizenship for black people, regardless of whether they were enslaved or free, and therefore the rights and privileges it confers upon American citizens could not apply to them. The decision was made in the case of Dred Scott, an enslaved black man whose owners had taken him from Missouri, which was a slave-holding state, into the Missouri Territory, most of which had been designated "free" territory by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. When his owners later brought him back to Missouri, Scott sued in court for his freedom, claiming that because he had been taken into "free" U.S. territory, he had automatically been freed, and was legally no longer a slave. Scott sued first in Missouri state court, which ruled that he was still a slave under its law. He then sued in U.S. federal court, which ruled against him by deciding that it had to apply Missouri law to the case. He then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Hugo Lafayette Black was an American lawyer, politician, and jurist who served as a U.S. Senator from 1927 to 1937 and as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1937 to 1971. A member of the Democratic Party and a devoted New Dealer, Black endorsed Franklin D. Roosevelt in both the 1932 and 1936 presidential elections. Having gained a reputation in the Senate as a reformer, Black was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Roosevelt and confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 63 to 16. He was the first of nine Roosevelt nominees to the Court, and he outlasted all except for William O. Douglas.
The federal government of the United States is the national government of the United States, a federal republic in North America, composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories and several island possessions. The federal government is composed of three distinct branches: legislative, executive and judicial, whose powers are vested by the U.S. Constitution in the Congress, the president and the federal courts, respectively. The powers and duties of these branches are further defined by acts of Congress, including the creation of executive departments and courts inferior to the Supreme Court.
John Marshall Harlan was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1955 to 1971. Harlan is often called John Marshall Harlan II to distinguish him from his grandfather John Marshall Harlan, who served on the Supreme Court from 1877 to 1911.
Incorporation, in United States law, is the doctrine by which portions of the Bill of Rights have been made applicable to the states. When the Bill of Rights was ratified, the courts held that its protections extended only to the actions of the federal government and that the Bill of Rights did not place limitations on the authority of the state and local governments. However, the post-Civil War era, beginning in 1865 with the Thirteenth Amendment, which declared the abolition of slavery, gave rise to the incorporation of other Amendments, applying more rights to the states and people over time. Gradually, various portions of the Bill of Rights have been held to be applicable to the state and local governments by incorporation through the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 and the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870.
The Free Exercise Clause accompanies the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause together read:
United States v. Seeger, 380 U.S. 163 (1965), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court ruled that the exemption from the military draft for conscientious objectors could not be reserved only for those professing conformity with the moral directives of a supreme being, but also for those whose views on war derived from a "sincere and meaningful belief which occupies in the life of its possessor a place parallel to that filled by the God of those" who had routinely gotten the exemption.
Katzenbach v. Morgan, 384 U.S. 641 (1966), was a United States Supreme Court case regarding the power of Congress, pursuant to Section 5 of the 14th Amendment, to enact laws that enforce and interpret provisions of the Constitution.
The Supreme Court of Louisiana is the highest court and court of last resort in the U.S. state of Louisiana. The modern Supreme Court, composed of seven justices, meets in the French Quarter of New Orleans.
South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301 (1966), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court rejected a challenge from the state of South Carolina to the preclearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which required that some states submit changes in election districts to the Attorney General of the United States. The preclearance provisions were ruled constitutional and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was enforced in full.
Elk v. Wilkins, 112 U.S. 94 (1884), was a United States Supreme Court case respecting the citizenship status of Indians.
Harman v. Forssenius, 380 U.S. 528 (1965), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that Virginia's partial elimination of the poll tax violated the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
United States v. Louisiana or Louisiana v. United States refers to a number of cases heard by the United States Supreme Court:
United States constitutional law is the body of law governing the interpretation and implementation of the United States Constitution.
This is a timeline of voting rights in the United States.
The original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of the United States is limited to a small class of cases described in Article III, section 2, of the United States Constitution, and further delineated by statute.
