United States v. E. C. Knight Co., 156 U.S. 1 (1895), also known as the "Sugar Trust Case," was a United States Supreme Court antitrust case that severely limited the federal government's power to pursue antitrust actions under the Sherman Antitrust Act. In Chief Justice Melville Fuller's majority opinion, the Court held that the U.S. Congress could not regulate manufacturing and thus gave state governments the sole power to take legal action against manufacturing monopolies. The case has never been overruled, but in Swift & Co. v. United States and subsequent cases, the Court has held that Congress can regulate manufacturing when it affects interstate commerce.
The Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. 36 (1873), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision which ruled that the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution only protects the legal rights that are associated with federal U.S. citizenship, not those that pertain to state citizenship. Though the decision in the Slaughter-House Cases minimized the impact of the Privileges or Immunities Clause on state law, the Supreme Court would later incorporate the Bill of Rights to strike down state laws on the basis of other clauses. In 2010, the Court rejected arguments in McDonald v. Chicago to overrule the established precedent of Slaughterhouse and decided instead to incorporate the Second Amendment via the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that invalidated regulations of the poultry industry according to the nondelegation doctrine and as an invalid use of Congress' power under the Commerce Clause. This was a unanimous decision that rendered parts of the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA), a main component of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, unconstitutional. The case from which the ruling stemmed was nicknamed the "Sick Chicken Case".
Lewis Franklin Powell Jr. was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1972 to 1987.
Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64 (1938), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court held that the United States does not have a general federal common law and that U.S. federal courts must apply state law, not federal law, to lawsuits between parties from different states that do not involve federal questions. In reaching this holding, the Court overturned almost a century of federal civil procedure case law, and established the foundation of the modern law of diversity jurisdiction.
Williams & Wilkins Co. v. United States, 487 F.2d 1345, was an important intellectual property decision by the federal Court of Claims, later affirmed by a per curiam opinion from an evenly divided United States Supreme Court, with only eight justices voting. The decision held that it was a fair use for libraries to photocopy articles for use by patrons engaged in scientific research.
United States v. Moreland, 258 U.S. 433 (1922), was a case heard by the Supreme Court of the United States on March 9 and 10, 1922, and decided a month later on April 17. The case involved a Fifth Amendment rights issue centering on whether or not hard labor was an infamous punishment or whether imprisonment in a penitentiary was a necessity for punishment to be considered infamous.
Quong Wing v R is a famous Supreme Court of Canada decision where the Court upheld a provincial law that discriminated against the Chinese.
The Federal Reporter is a case law reporter in the United States that is published by West Publishing and a part of the National Reporter System. It begins with cases decided in 1880; pre-1880 cases were later retroactively compiled by West Publishing into a separate reporter, Federal Cases. The fourth and current Federal Reporter series publishes decisions of the United States courts of appeals and the United States Court of Federal Claims; prior series had varying scopes that covered decisions of other federal courts as well. Though the Federal Reporter is an unofficial reporter and West is a private company that does not have a legal monopoly over the court opinions it publishes, it has so dominated the industry in the United States that legal professionals, including judges, uniformly cite to the Federal Reporter for included decisions. Approximately 30 new volumes are published each year.
The Federal Supplement is a case law reporter published by West Publishing in the United States that includes select opinions of the United States district courts since 1932, and is part of the National Reporter System. Although the Federal Supplement is an unofficial reporter and West is a private company that does not have a legal monopoly over the court opinions it publishes, it has so dominated the industry in the U.S. that legal professionals uniformly cite the Federal Supplement for included decisions. Approximately 40 new volumes are published per year.
Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, 494 U.S. 652 (1990), was a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States regarding campaign finance regulations. The majority opinion authored by Thurgood Marshall held that the Michigan Campaign Finance Act, which burdened political speech by prohibiting corporations from using treasury money to make independent expenditures to support or oppose candidates in elections, was appropriately justified by a compelling state interest so as to overcome a First Amendment challenge. The court also found no Fourteenth Amendment violation, stating that Congress could treat press corporations and nonpress corporations differently without violating the Equal Protection Clause. Upholding the restriction on corporate political speech, The Court stated that "Corporate wealth can unfairly influence elections"; however, the Michigan law still allowed the corporation to make such expenditures from a segregated fund.
Hester v. United States, 265 U.S. 57 (1924), is a decision by the United States Supreme Court, which established the open-fields doctrine. In an opinion written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, the Court held that "the special protection accorded by the Fourth Amendment to the people in their 'persons, houses, papers and effects', is not extended to the open fields."
Smyth v. Ames, 171 U.S. 361 (1898), also called The Maximum Freight Case, was an 1898 United States Supreme Court case. The Supreme Court voided a Nebraska railroad tariff law, declaring that it violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in that it takes property without the due process of law. The Court defined the constitutional limits of governmental power to set railroad and utility rates by stating that regulated industries have the right to a "fair return". The ruling was later overturned in Federal Power Commission v. Hope Natural Gas Company (1944).
Henry Billings Brown was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1891 to 1906.
United States v. Stevens, 559 U.S. 460 (2010), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States, which ruled that 18 U.S.C. § 48, a federal statute criminalizing the commercial production, sale, or possession of depictions of cruelty to animals, was an unconstitutional abridgment of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech.
Metro Broadcasting, Inc. v. FCC, 497 U.S. 547 (1990), was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States that held that intermediate scrutiny should be applied to equal protection challenges to federal statutes using benign racial classifications for a non-remedial purpose. The Court distinguished the previous year's decision City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., by noting that it applied only to actions by state and local governments. Metro Broadcasting was overruled by Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña, which held that strict scrutiny should be applied to federal laws that use benign racial classifications. This opinion was the last authored by William J. Brennan Jr., the longtime leader of the Court's liberal wing.
United States v. Barker, 15 U.S. 395 (1817), was a case decided by the United States Supreme Court upholding the common law tradition that private citizens may not demand costs from the federal government. The case involved a motion for costs filed against the United States Government and resolved the previously unanswered question of whether courts could award costs against the United States federal government. The Court's opinion read, in its entirety, "The United States never pays costs." Jurists have remarked that Chief Justice John Marshall's six-word opinion is one of the shortest Supreme Court cases ever written.
Puerto Rico v. Sanchez Valle, 579 U.S. 59 (2016), is a criminal case that came before the Supreme Court of the United States, which considered whether Puerto Rico and the federal government of the United States are separate sovereigns for purposes of the Double Jeopardy Clause of the United States Constitution.
Ferris v. Frohman, 223 U.S. 424 (1912), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held an unauthorized public production of an unpublished play does not invalidate the play owner's common law copyright.
