Marbury v. Madison | BRI’s Homework Help Series

Case background and primary source documents concerning the Supreme Court case of Marbury v. Madison. Setting the precedent of Judicial review, this lesson focuses on the question of whether or not the Supreme Court should have the power to overturn unconstitutional federal laws.

By the end of this section, you will explain the causes and effects of policy debates in the early republic.

Judicial Review or Judicial Activism? Marbury v. Madison (1803) Legal scholars consider Marbury v. Madison (1803) a central text for understanding the role of the Courts to interpret law in light of the Constitution, known as judicial review. It is the centerpiece of many constitutional law classes.

In this Homework Help video, learn the story of the landmark Supreme Court case of Baker v. Carr. How did the ruling in this case contribute to the democratic principle of “one person-one vote”?

Does an individual have a right to a lawyer, regardless of the crime he or she is charged with? In 1961, Clarence Gideon was arrested and charged with breaking and entering and petty larceny in Panama City, Florida. His request for a state-provided defense attorney was denied since Florida law only required doing so for capital offense cases. After Gideon was sentenced to 5 years in prison, he argued that Florida violated the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of the right to counsel. The Supreme Court heard Gideon’s case and ruled in a 7-0 decision that the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of an attorney applies to states through the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment.

The Dred Scott v. Sandford case of 1857 was brought to the Supreme Court just four years before the start of the Civil War. Dred Scott sued his master for his freedom and Judge Robert Taney ultimately ruled two things. First, African Americans were not citizens and had no right to sue in court. Second, Congress did not have the constitutional authority to ban slavery from the states. This case is considered one of the worst rulings in the history of the Supreme Court.

Brown v. Board of Education was a case brought to the Supreme Court in 1954 after Linda Brown, an African American student in Kansas, was denied access to the white-only schools nearby her house. Future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall was the lawyer for the case, and argued that segregated schools were inherently unequal. Ultimately, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Linda Brown and declared segregation unconstitutional. This is one of the landmark cases that led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.

Grutter v. Bollinger was a case brought to the Supreme Court over the use of Affirmative Action in the college admissions process. The University of Michigan Law School denied acceptance to Barbara Grutter, despite her impressive resume. Grutter, a white woman, believed that her rejection was based on her race. The Supreme Court Justices ultimately ruled that the University of Michigan Law School’s admissions process was constitutional. However, there was doubt among the most conservative Supreme Court justices like Scalia and Rehnquist that affirmative action policy was a constitutional practice for university admission departments to take part in. Affirmative Action is still a highly debated topic today.

Can the police use illegally seized evidence in a court of law? The landmark Supreme Court case Mapp v. Ohio addressed this issue, and the decision has had a lasting impact in the United States.

How did the odious doctrine of “separate but equal” become legally permissible in the U.S.? This Homework Help narrative explores the story of the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court case.