50 Fun Facts About Civil Liberties

Which 1966 Supreme Court ruling requires police to tell suspects in custody that they may stay silent?

Miranda v. Arizona threw out Ernesto Miranda's confession to a Phoenix kidnapping because police never told him his rights. He was retried without the confession in 1967 and convicted again.

In Tinker v. Des Moines, students were suspended for wearing what to protest the Vietnam War?

Black armbands got 13-year-old Mary Beth Tinker, her brother John and their friend Christopher Eckhardt suspended in December 1965. The Court said students do not shed their free speech rights at the schoolhouse gate.

Which 1944 Supreme Court case upheld the wartime removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast?

Korematsu v. United States was repudiated by the Court in 2018, when Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that it was gravely wrong the day it was decided.

In Texas v. Johnson (1989), the Supreme Court protected which act of protest as symbolic speech?

Burning an American flag was a crime in 48 states until this 5–4 ruling. Gregory Lee Johnson had set one alight in Dallas during the 1984 Republican National Convention.

Which secret Vietnam War study did a 1971 Supreme Court ruling let The New York Times go on printing?

The Pentagon Papers ran to 47 volumes and about 7,000 pages. Daniel Ellsberg, who had helped produce the study, let a Times reporter read 43 of the volumes.

Which Latin-named writ, suspended by Abraham Lincoln in 1861, lets prisoners challenge their detention in court?

Habeas corpus was first suspended by Lincoln in Maryland, after the Baltimore riot of April 1861. Chief Justice Roger Taney ruled that only Congress could suspend it, and the administration ignored him.

Which president's 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists described a wall of separation between church and state?

Thomas Jefferson wrote the letter on New Year's Day to a Baptist association in Connecticut, and it ran in a Massachusetts newspaper. The Supreme Court has cited his metaphor again and again.

The Third Amendment bars the government from forcing homeowners to do what during peacetime without consent?

Colonists resented being made to house soldiers under Britain's Quartering Acts. The Third Amendment has never been the primary basis of a Supreme Court decision.

Which former NSA contractor leaked files in 2013 revealing the bulk collection of Americans' call records?

Edward Snowden spent a month in a Moscow airport before Russia granted him asylum, and he became a Russian citizen in 2022. A US appeals court later ruled one program he exposed illegal.

In Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), which religious community won the right to end schooling after eighth grade?

The Amish parents in the case had each been fined just $5 for keeping their teenagers out of high school. The Court ruled their religious freedom outweighed the state's interest in more schooling.

Which English charter, sealed by King John at Runnymede, promised that no free man would be jailed unlawfully?

Magna Carta survives in four original 1215 copies: two at the British Library, one at Lincoln Castle and one at Salisbury Cathedral. King John sealed it to make peace with rebel barons.

Which Virginia congressman, who at first opposed the idea, drafted the amendments that became the Bill of Rights?

James Madison steered twelve amendments through Congress in 1789, but the states ratified only ten of them by 1791. One of the leftovers finally became the 27th Amendment in 1992.

Which group, founded in 1920, financed John T. Scopes's defense when he was tried for teaching evolution in Tennessee?

The ACLU counted Helen Keller and Jane Addams among its founders. At the Scopes trial in 1925, Clarence Darrow, a member of its national committee, led the teacher's defense.

Which part of the Bill of Rights did D.C. v. Heller (2008) read as protecting handguns kept at home?

The Second Amendment case was brought by Dick Heller, a special police officer who carried a gun at work in federal office buildings but was not allowed to keep one in his Washington home.

Which unanimous 1954 Supreme Court decision ruled that racially segregated public schools are unconstitutional?

Brown v. Board of Education was argued for the families by NAACP chief counsel Thurgood Marshall. In 1967 he joined the Supreme Court himself as its first African-American justice.

Which doctrine did the Supreme Court endorse in Plessy v. Ferguson, its 1896 ruling on Louisiana railway cars?

Separate but equal stood as law for 58 years. Homer Plessy, who was one-eighth Black, had deliberately taken a seat in a whites-only train car in New Orleans to set up a test case.

A witness who pleads the Fifth is invoking the Fifth Amendment's shield against what?

Self-incrimination pleas became so common at 1950s Red Scare hearings that witnesses who refused to answer were branded Fifth Amendment communists.

Which Fifth Amendment safeguard bars prosecutors from retrying a defendant for the same crime after an acquittal?

Double jeopardy has a big exception called dual sovereignty: a state and the federal government may each prosecute a person for the same act.

The Eighth Amendment bans excessive bail, excessive fines and punishments described by which three-word phrase?

Cruel and unusual was borrowed almost word for word from the English Bill of Rights of 1689. That clause is traced to the perjurer Titus Oates, who was tied to a cart and whipped across London.

Which 1963 Supreme Court case guaranteed poor defendants facing felony charges a lawyer paid for by the state?

Gideon v. Wainwright began when Clarence Earl Gideon appealed in pencil on prison stationery from Florida State Prison. Retried with a lawyer, he was acquitted after an hour of deliberation.

Which 1962 Supreme Court case struck down a state-written prayer recited each morning in New York public schools?

Engel v. Vitale turned on a prayer just 22 words long, written by the state's Regents. Five parents from New Hyde Park sued to end it, naming local school official William Vitale.

Which provision, in the opening words of the First Amendment, bars Congress from creating an official religion?

The Establishment Clause at first restrained only the federal government. Massachusetts and Connecticut went on supporting the Congregational church with tax money.

West Virginia v. Barnette, brought by Jehovah's Witnesses, said schools cannot force students to recite what?

The Pledge of Allegiance ruling overturned a decision the Court had made only three years earlier. The majority wrote that no official, high or petty, may prescribe what is orthodox in politics or religion.

Which test for limiting speech did Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes set out in Schenck v. United States (1919)?

Clear and present danger came from the same opinion as the famous image of falsely shouting fire in a theatre. Charles Schenck had sent flyers urging draft-age men to resist induction.

Which standard, named in the Fourth Amendment's text, must police meet before a judge issues a warrant?

Probable cause grew out of English common law and the old saying that a man's home is his castle. It is a higher bar than reasonable suspicion but lower than the proof needed to convict.

Which principle, applied to state courts by Mapp v. Ohio (1961), keeps illegally obtained evidence out of trials?

The exclusionary rule reached the states after Cleveland police searched Dollree Mapp's home for a suspect in a bombing aimed at future boxing promoter Don King. The supposed warrant they showed her was never seen again.

Terry v. Ohio (1968) upheld which brief police tactic when an officer reasonably suspects a person is armed?

Stop and frisk reached the Court after a Cleveland officer watched two men pace past the same store window again and again. When he patted them down, both were carrying pistols.

Riley v. California (2014) held that police usually need a warrant to search which item taken during an arrest?

A cell phone is unlike the other objects in a pocket, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. David Riley's had been searched after he was pulled over in San Diego in 2009 for expired registration tags.

Which part of the Bill of Rights guarantees the accused a speedy, public trial and the help of a lawyer?

The Sixth Amendment packs eight different rights into one sentence. In Ramos v. Louisiana (2020) the Court added that guilty verdicts must be unanimous in state trials as well as federal ones.

Furman v. Georgia (1972) brought a four-year nationwide halt to which punishment, revived by Gregg v. Georgia?

The death penalty was halted by a one-paragraph ruling followed by more than 233 pages of individual opinions, the longest set the Court had ever written. Dozens of states then rewrote their laws.

Which unwritten guarantee did Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) find when it struck down a ban on contraceptives?

The right to privacy is named nowhere in the Constitution. Justice William O. Douglas found it in penumbras formed by emanations from other guarantees in the Bill of Rights.

Which 2022 Supreme Court decision overruled Roe v. Wade and returned abortion law to the states?

Dobbs v. Jackson arose from a Mississippi ban on most abortions after 15 weeks, challenged by the state's only abortion clinic. A draft of the opinion leaked to Politico weeks before the ruling.

Which 2015 Supreme Court ruling guaranteed same-sex couples the freedom to marry in all fifty states?

Obergefell v. Hodges began when Jim Obergefell asked Ohio to record him as the surviving spouse of his husband, John Arthur, who was terminally ill with ALS.

Loving v. Virginia (1967) struck down state laws banning what, in a case brought by Richard and Mildred Loving?

Interracial marriage had earned the Lovings a prison sentence, suspended on condition that they leave Virginia for 25 years. Police had found them asleep, their marriage certificate on the bedroom wall.

Which law, signed by Lyndon Johnson after a long Senate filibuster, banned segregation in public places?

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was first proposed by John F. Kennedy in June 1963. It outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.

Which doctrine has the Supreme Court used to apply most Bill of Rights guarantees to the states, one at a time?

Selective incorporation chipped away at an 1833 ruling that the Bill of Rights restrained only the federal government. Justice Hugo Black wanted every guarantee applied at once, but the Court declined.

The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments both say no person may lose life, liberty or property without what?

Due process of law first appeared as a phrase in an English statute of 1354, more than four centuries before the Bill of Rights. American courts now read it to cover both fair procedures and certain basic rights.

Which government power to take private property for public use was upheld in Kelo v. City of New London (2005)?

Eminent domain let New London take Susette Kelo's home for a private redevelopment plan. The developer never found financing, and the contested land sat empty for more than a decade.

Which First Amendment freedom, curbed by the House gag rules of 1836, covers asking government to right a wrong?

Petition rights were put to the test in 1836, when the House of Representatives began automatically tabling every anti-slavery appeal it received and prohibited any discussion of them.

Which 1925 case about a socialist manifesto held that free speech guarantees also bind state governments?

Gitlow v. New York was a loss for Benjamin Gitlow himself: the Court upheld his criminal anarchy conviction. He was a former member of the New York State Assembly.

Which form of censorship did Near v. Minnesota (1931) strike down after a court silenced a Minneapolis scandal sheet?

Prior restraint had silenced The Saturday Press, a Minneapolis weekly whose publisher has been described as anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic and anti-labor. The Court sided with him anyway.

Under New York Times v. Sullivan, what must a public official prove to win a libel suit over false statements?

Actual malice means knowing a statement was false or recklessly ignoring whether it was. The case grew from a full-page ad by supporters of Martin Luther King Jr. that criticized Montgomery police.

Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), source of the imminent lawless action test, sided with a leader of which group?

The Ku Klux Klan leader, Clarence Brandenburg, had himself invited a Cincinnati television reporter to film the rally. He was then charged under an Ohio statute for the speech he made there.

Which colonial New York printer, acquitted of libel in 1735, became an early symbol of freedom of the press?

John Peter Zenger was found not guilty by jurors who took only ten minutes. His lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, argued that truth is a defense against libel after the printer's newspaper attacked governor William Cosby.

Which Socialist won over 900,000 votes for president in 1920 while jailed for a speech against the draft?

Eugene V. Debs campaigned from behind bars and still took 3.4 percent of the vote. President Warren Harding commuted his sentence in December 1921.

Which part of the Bill of Rights says that listing certain rights does not deny others retained by the people?

The Ninth Amendment was likened to a clause covered by an inkblot by Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, who told his confirmation hearing that a judge should not apply words he cannot understand.

Which 2010 Supreme Court case applied the freedom to keep and bear arms to state and local governments?

McDonald v. Chicago was named for Otis McDonald, a 76-year-old retired maintenance engineer. His city had refused all new handgun registrations since 1982.

Which standard of judicial review does the Supreme Court apply to laws that classify people by race?

Strict scrutiny treats a law as presumptively invalid unless the government shows a compelling interest and a narrowly tailored law. It is the most stringent standard that US courts use.

Which legislative act, banned by the Constitution, declares a person guilty of a crime without any trial?

A bill of attainder is banned twice in the Constitution, once for Congress and once for the states. In England, those attainted could no longer own property or pass it on to their families.

In Katz v. United States (1967), the FBI recorded a gambler's calls without a warrant by bugging what?

A telephone booth on Sunset Boulevard was where Katz called in his gambling picks to bookmakers in Boston and Miami. The Court ruled that the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places.