The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. Established pursuant to Article III of the U.S. Constitution in 1789, it has original jurisdiction over a small range of cases, such as suits between two or more states, and those involving ambassadors. It also has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all federal court and state court cases that involve a point of federal constitutional or statutory law. The Court has the power of judicial review, the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution or an executive act for being unlawful. However, it may act only within the context of a case in an area of law over which it has jurisdiction. The Court may decide cases having political overtones, but it has ruled that it does not have power to decide nonjusticiable political questions. Each year it agrees to hear about 100–150 of the more than 7,000 cases that it is asked to review.
The case was a key part of government arguments in the 2006 case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, defending its contention that the Supreme Court should not have heard the case, because Hamdan was still being processed by a military tribunal court in Guantanamo Bay.
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. 557 (2006), is a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that military commissions set up by the Bush administration to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay lack "the power to proceed because its structures and procedures violate both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the four Geneva Conventions signed in 1949." Specifically, the ruling says that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions was violated.
Both the majority opinion by Justice John Paul Stevens and the dissenting argument of Justice Antonin Scalia referenced the case.
John Paul Stevens is an American lawyer and jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1975 until his retirement in 2010. At the time of his retirement, he was the second-oldest serving justice in the history of the Court, the third-longest serving Supreme Court Justice in history. Stevens was considered to have been on the liberal side of the Court at the time of his retirement.
Antonin Gregory Scalia was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1986 until his death in 2016. Appointed to the Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, Scalia was described as the intellectual anchor for the originalist and textualist position in the Court's conservative wing.
The United States Reports are the official record of the rulings, orders, case tables, in alphabetical order both by the name of the petitioner and by the name of the respondent, and other proceedings of the Supreme Court of the United States. United States Reports, once printed and bound, are the final version of court opinions and cannot be changed. Opinions of the court in each case are prepended with a headnote prepared by the Reporter of Decisions, and any concurring or dissenting opinions are published sequentially. The Court's Publication Office oversees the binding and publication of the volumes of United States Reports, although the actual printing, binding, and publication are performed by private firms under contract with the United States Government Publishing Office.
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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.
McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420 (1961), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that laws with religious origins are not unconstitutional if they have a secular purpose.
Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520 (1993), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that an ordinance passed in Hialeah, Florida, forbidding the "unnecessar[y]" killing of "an animal in a public or private ritual or ceremony not for the primary purpose of food consumption", was unconstitutional.
James v. United States, 366 U.S. 213 (1961), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that the receipt of money obtained by a taxpayer illegally was taxable income, even though the law might require the taxpayer to repay the ill-gotten gains to the person from whom they had been taken.
Gonzales v. Carhart, 550 U.S. 124 (2007), is a United States Supreme Court case that upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. The case reached the high court after U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales appealed a ruling of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in favor of LeRoy Carhart that struck down the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Also before the Supreme Court was the consolidated appeal of Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which had struck down the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.
Braunfeld v. Brown, 366 U.S. 599 (1961), was a case decided by the United States Supreme Court. In a 6-3 decision, the Court held that a Pennsylvania law forbidding the sale of various retail products on Sunday was not an unconstitutional interference with religion as described in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119 (2000), is a case decided before the United States Supreme Court involving U.S. criminal procedure regarding searches and seizures.
Schlesinger v. Holtzman, 414 U.S. 1321 (1973), was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States involving the Constitution's War Powers Clause. The Court reversed a ruling by Justice William O. Douglas ordering the military to stop bombing Cambodia.
Al Odah v. United States is a court case filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights and co-counsels challenging the legality of the continued detention as enemy combatants of Guantanamo detainees. It was consolidated with Boumediene v. Bush (2008), which is the lead name of the decision.
Drope v. Missouri, 420 U.S. 162 (1975), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held a Missouri trial court deprived a defendant of due process by failing to order a competency examination after he was hospitalized following an attempted suicide and as a result missed a portion of his trial for a capital offense.
Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn, 420 U.S. 469 (1975), was a United States Supreme Court case involving freedom of the press publishing public information. The Court held that both a Georgia Statute prohibiting the release of a rape victim's name and its common-law privacy action counterpart were unconstitutional. The case was argued on November 11, 1974 and decided on March 3, 1975.
Train v. City of New York, 420 U.S. 35 (1975), was a statutory interpretation case in the Supreme Court of the United States. Although one commentator characterizes the case's implications as meaning "[t]he president cannot frustrate the will of Congress by killing a program through impoundment," the Court majority itself made no categorical constitutional pronouncement about impoundment power but focused on the statute's language and legislative history. The words "Constitution," "separation of powers," "separated powers" appear nowhere in the 8-justice majority opinion. The Court's opinion approaches the case as a question of statutory interpretation, albeit one with implications for the American system of checks and balances.
Nevada Commission on Ethics v. Carrigan, 564 U.S. 117 (2011), was a Supreme Court of the United States decision in which the Court held that the Nevada Ethics in Government Law, which required government officials recuse in cases involving a conflict of interest, is not unconstitutionally overbroad. Specifically, the law requires government officials to recuse themselves from advocating for and voting on the passage of legislation if private commitments to the interests of others materially affect the official's judgment. Under the terms of this law, the Nevada Commission on Ethics censured city councilman Michael Carrigan for voting on a land project for which his campaign manager was a paid consultant. Carrigan challenged his censure in court and the Nevada Supreme Court ruled in his favor, claiming that casting his vote was protected speech. The Supreme Court reversed, ruling that voting by a public official on a public matter is not First Amendment speech.
Antoine v. Washington, 420 U.S. 194 (1975), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that treaties and laws must be construed in favor of Native Americans (Indians); that the Supremacy Clause precludes the application of state game laws to the tribe; that Congress showed no intent to subject the tribe to state jurisdiction for hunting; and while the state can regulate non-Indians in the ceded area, Indians must be exempted from such regulations.
Los Angeles v. Patel, 576 U.S. ___ (2015), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that a Los Angeles law, Municipal Code § 41.49, requiring hotel operators to retain records about guests for a ninety-day period is facially unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution because it does not allow for pre-compliance review.
United States v. Miller , 425 U.S. 435 (1976), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that bank records are not subject to protection under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The case, along with Smith v. Maryland, established the principal of the third-party doctrine in relation to privacy rights.
