Transcription
Hey guys, um, I know we've done a couple lectures on judicial review. I think we've done a good job going over what this means and constitutional interpretation. We've gone over the rules of the court constitutionally and through unwritten constitution. I think we've taken you through some cases—early Federal cases, Schwarzenegger cases, and John Marshall. I think we've touched base with some of your other cases, um, I'm not really sure though. So I really want to dedicate a lecture to Supreme Court cases that pop up on the exam.
I'm just really quickly going to go through your restrictive cases. Your cases where basically the Court ruled for the government and against civil liberty, or for expansion of power or denial of rights. But I really want to get to the Warren Court and see if we can't do some of those cases today. Really quick language on the court cases you should know: *Marbury v. Madison* established judicial review. You should know *McCulloch v. Maryland* and *Gibbons v. Ogden* in the context of strength and schwen agorism. Your negative cases—I call them negative cases because they're strict interpretation cases—cases that kind of deny the person claiming more rights. You have the *Dred Scott* Decision, which declared slaves as property, leading to the inflammation of abolitionism in the North and becoming one of the causes of the Civil War. You have *Korematsu v. United States*, the Japanese American internment camp case, where the government basically said, because of national security reasons, we can negate habeas corpus and lock up Americans who happen to have Japanese blood running through their veins.
We also have cases like *Schenck v. United States*. Remember, Schenck was a World War I protester screaming, "Don't go to war! Don't do the draft!" He's arrested and claims freedom of speech. What the Court says in this instance is that speech is not absolute; you do not have the right to yell fire in a movie theater. Because of World War I, the Red Scare, socialism, and fear, Schenck's words are seen as a clear and present danger. The Klan, for instance, works with these rules too. You can yell bad things about other races and good things about yourself, but you're not allowed to say, "Let's go kill someone," or, "Let's start a riot"—that's a clear and present danger concept. *Plessy v. Ferguson* we've done, and the denial of the 14th Amendment by saying separate is equal. I'm going through my head really quick with negative cases. *Cherokee Nation v. Georgia* you don't really need to know. I think I'm going to move on. We're just doing Big Ideas here for the regions. Please don't let this substitute good old-fashioned notes and more specific content. But you don't want to know that right now, do you?
Moving on, let's do the Warren Court. All right, the Warren Court is big because it's the only other court you really have to know the name of besides the Marshall Court. They don't do Rehnquist Court on the test in terms of the name, but the Warren Court is big because they're going to take that 14th Amendment—the 14th Amendment which says no State shall deny equal protection under the law—and they're going to start taking action on that by challenging rules and laws that exist in states, which will result in the expansion of civil liberties but more Federal kind of, you know, action. Conservatives complain because they say that's not the Court's job; that's Congress's job. But the Court sees it in the sense of protecting liberty and the Bill of Rights using the 14th Amendment. Earl Warren was actually a Republican governor of California, I believe, in the 1950s or late 40s, early 50s. He was appointed by Dwight Eisenhower, who would later call Earl Warren the biggest mistake of his life because once Earl Warren got on the court, he wasn't conservative anymore; he was very liberal and loose interpretation. He took the words of the Amendments and, using the 14th, what did he do? Yeah, he made them mean more than they said in the first place. Think of like Bible interpretation—you go to different churches, you hear different things. Some churches interpret the Bible where they allow gays to be welcomed as part of their community; others see it as a sin and abomination because they read the Bible strictly. Earl Warren's over here, loose interpretation. So let's go over some cases.
All right, here are the cases that I've seen on the test. *Brown v. Board of Education* we've done. Let's start in the 1960s. I've seen *Engel v. Vitale*. The First Amendment free exercise clause says that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. We're working here with the Establishment Clause—that Congress shall make no law kind of picking a religion. So school prayer was occurring at this point in many states, and *Engel v. Vitale* is a challenge to that. Can the school lead a prayer in the morning or anytime during the day? And the answer is no. The school is the government, and by the government reading a prayer, the government's choosing a prayer. And I know a lot of people get upset about this. 98% maybe in the classroom are all Christians who have no problem with the word God, and God is a word that has kind of been used since the founding of the country, but it's not in the Constitution. The word God isn't in the Constitution, and the rule is, you know, we—the government doesn't get to kind of sanctify that. People who say, "Well, it's on the money," in court arguments, they argue that's tradition; that's just part of our tradition. They don't argue that it should be on the money because it's true and everything else is not. So in *Engel*, the Court's going to say, look, we need to protect the Hindu child, or the atheist child, or the agnostic child. And if you want to pray, that's a family-based activity; that's something that you do at home that the government doesn't facilitate; that it shouldn't get in the way of you praying. Can you pray in school? Yeah, go ahead, do it. Sit down tomorrow first period, close your eyes and do this: Amen. No one's going to stop you. It's when the government comes into the picture.
Other court cases that are on the test: *Mapp v. Ohio*. She—oh, my dirty little old lady case! Yeah, I said that—dirty little old lady case. She's a nasty little old lady. *Mapp v. Ohio* is the exclusionary rule. This has to do with evidence that's obtained illegally, with a bad or without a search warrant, in relationship to the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment—privacy—into poo—says that you have to have a search warrant, and that search warrant is based on probable cause, meaning you have some type of evidence in order to get that search warrant. I can't go to a judge and go, "Can I search Johnny's house? Why? 'Cause he's a bad kid." I need reasons; I need a fingerprint, or a snitch, or a witness, something. So in *Mapp v. Ohio*, the police didn't have this as they were looking for a suspect in a crime that was related to Miss Mapp. Miss Mapp was hanging out; they knocked on the door; she demanded a warrant; they didn't have one, so they showed her a phony warrant that she then confiscated. She shoved it down her bra or something. And when they didn't find the suspect, they started digging, and they eventually found illegal obscene pornography. She's a dirty little nasty old lady, and they arrest her on obscenity charges. So the question isn't, did she possess illegal material? She did possess it. She's not arguing—she says, "I'm the dirty little lady." She's arguing that the police had no right to come into her house and find it. So what the Court does is they take the Fourth Amendment and they create the exclusionary rule: Not only do you need a warrant, which it does say, but if you don't have one, it's out; you can't use it in the court of law. It's an expansion of rights, of civil liberties, or protection from government abuse.
Other cases on there are *Miranda v. Arizona*. Miranda—most people know what they read you when they arrest you; it's called your Miranda Rights. You have the—you could say—and I know you can—you have the right to remain silent; if you—you have the right to an attorney; if you can't afford one, one will be provided before you do; do you understand these rights? blah, blah, blah, blah. It doesn't say you need to do that in the Constitution; it doesn't say in the Fifth or Sixth Amendment that you're supposed to be told you have the right to remain silent. So when Miranda is arrested for a horrific crime that I'm not going to talk about, and he basically is forced to confess through interrogation, he's going to claim he had the right to an attorney, had the right to remain silent, but he didn't know because he was, you know, maybe indigent, or he didn't have an education. And the Court agrees, and now the police must read you your rights. Fifth Amendment—whoop—bigger now. *Gideon v. Wainwright* pops up on the test sometimes. We all take this for granted that we know that if we're poor and we're arrested that we're going to get a lawyer, and most of you think that's in the Constitution. It's not. It says you have the right to an attorney; it doesn't say that you have the right for us to give you an attorney. This is like the right to the pursuit of happiness—you don't expect the government to give you happiness. But the Court now is going to say, look, that's the spirit of the amendment. The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to an attorney, and that is the spirit that if you can't afford one, of course we're not going to make you defend yourself like Gideon in Florida, who was convicted. And remember, this doesn't mean you go free; it means you go back to Step One to a new trial, and now we'll give you an attorney and we'll try it again. I think he was found guilty again, but the concept is we've expanded those rights. *Escobedo v. Illinois*—that if once you start questioning a suspect, once they say "lawyer," the questioning stops. *Roe v. Wade*, which is the Fourth Amendment right to privacy and abortion—you have the right to be secure in your persons. It's also a Ninth Amendment case that basically the Ninth Amendment says all rights not in the Constitution are reserved for the people. All of these are 14th Amendment cases—every single one of them. So I have to end right now; I'm out of time. But make sure that you kind of go over those cases: *Engel v. Vitale*, *Mapp v. Ohio*, *Escobedo v. Illinois*, *Miranda v. Arizona*, *Gideon v. Wainwright*. There's some school cases I can't go over right now: *New Jersey v. TLO*, *Tinker v. Des Moines*, and uh, there's another one called *Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier*. I can't do it; I just can't. Good luck. Bye.