1.
Supreme Court of the United States
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The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest federal court of the United States. In the legal system of the United States, the Supreme Court is the interpreter of federal constitutional law. The Court normally consists of the Chief Justice of the United States and eight justices who are nominated by the President. Once appointed, justices have life tenure unless they resign, retire, in modern discourse, the justices are often categorized as having conservative, moderate, or liberal philosophies of law and of judicial interpretation. Each justice has one vote, and while many cases are decided unanimously, the Court meets in the United States Supreme Court Building in Washington, D. C. The Supreme Court is sometimes referred to as SCOTUS, in analogy to other acronyms such as POTUS. The ratification of the United States Constitution established the Supreme Court in 1789 and its powers are detailed in Article Three of the Constitution. The Supreme Court is the court specifically established by the Constitution. The Court first convened on February 2,1790, by which five of its six initial positions had been filled. According to historian Fergus Bordewich, in its first session, he Supreme Court convened for the first time at the Royal Exchange Building on Broad Street and they had no cases to consider. After a week of inactivity, they adjourned until September, the sixth member was not confirmed until May 12,1790. Because the full Court had only six members, every decision that it made by a majority was made by two-thirds. However, Congress has always allowed less than the Courts full membership to make decisions, under Chief Justices Jay, Rutledge, and Ellsworth, the Court heard few cases, its first decision was West v. Barnes, a case involving a procedural issue. The Courts power and prestige grew substantially during the Marshall Court, the Marshall Court also ended the practice of each justice issuing his opinion seriatim, a remnant of British tradition, and instead issuing a single majority opinion. Also during Marshalls tenure, although beyond the Courts control, the impeachment, the Taney Court made several important rulings, such as Sheldon v. Nevertheless, it is primarily remembered for its ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford, which helped precipitate the Civil War. In the Reconstruction era, the Chase, Waite, and Fuller Courts interpreted the new Civil War amendments to the Constitution, during World War II, the Court continued to favor government power, upholding the internment of Japanese citizens and the mandatory pledge of allegiance. Nevertheless, Gobitis was soon repudiated, and the Steel Seizure Case restricted the pro-government trend, the Warren Court dramatically expanded the force of Constitutional civil liberties. It held that segregation in public schools violates equal protection and that traditional legislative district boundaries violated the right to vote
2.
Earl Warren
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Earl Warren was an American jurist and politician, who served as the 30th Governor of California and later the 14th Chief Justice of the United States. Warren is the person elected to three consecutive terms as Governor of California, and with those three elected terms he is second only to Jerry Brown for total gubernatorial wins in California. Before holding these positions, he was the District Attorney for Alameda County, California, Warren was the nominee of the Republican Party for Vice President in 1948, as the running mate of Thomas E. Dewey. He was appointed to chair what became known as the Warren Commission, which was formed to investigate the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Earl Warren was born in Los Angeles, on March 19,1891, to Mathias H. Warren, a Norwegian immigrant whose family name was Varren, and his wife, Crystal. Mathias Warren was an employee of the Southern Pacific Railroad. After he was blacklisted for joining in a strike, the moved to Bakersfield, California. Matthias worked in a repair yard, and Earl had summer jobs in railroading. Earl Warren grew up in Bakersfield, where he attended Washington Junior High and his father was murdered there by an unknown person during a robbery. In 1912 Warren graduated with a B. A. in political science from the University of California, in 1914 he earned his J. D. at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. He was a member of The Gun Club secret society, and the Sigma Phi Society, as an undergraduate, Warren also played clarinet in the Cal Band. Warren maintained a friendship with fellow Cal student Robert Gordon Sproul. In 1948, at the Republican National Convention, Sproul would nominate Warren for Vice President, Warren was admitted to the California bar in 1914. Warren worked a year for Associated Oil Company in San Francisco, then joined Robinson & Robinson, in August 1917, Warren enlisted in the U. S. Army for World War I service. Assigned to the 91st Division at Camp Lewis, Washington, 1st Lieutenant Earl Warren was discharged in 1918. After the war, he served as a clerk of the Judicial Committee for the 1919 Session of the California State Assembly, then as the Deputy City Attorney in Oakland, Warren came to the attention of powerful Republican Joseph R. Knowland, publisher of The Oakland Tribune. He was strongly influenced by California Governor Hiram Johnson and other leaders of the Progressive Era to oppose corruption, in 1925, Warren was appointed as the District Attorney of Alameda County. Warren was re-elected to three four-year terms, Warren vigorously investigated allegations that a deputy sheriff was taking bribes in connection with street-paving arrangements
3.
Hugo Black
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Black is widely regarded as one of the most influential Supreme Court justices in the 20th century. During his political career, Black was regarded as a supporter of liberal policies. A reformer in the Senate and a devoted New Dealer, Black endorsed Roosevelt in both the 1932 and 1936 presidential elections, Hugo LaFayette Black was the youngest of the eight children of William Lafayette Black and Martha Toland Black. He was born on February 27,1886, in a wooden farmhouse in Ashland, Alabama. Because his brother Orlando had become a doctor, Hugo decided at first to follow in his footsteps. At age seventeen, he left school and enrolled at Birmingham Medical School, however, it was Orlando who suggested that Hugo should enroll at the University of Alabama School of Law. After graduating in June 1906, he moved back to Ashland and his practice was not successful there, so Black moved to Birmingham in 1907 where he specialized in labor law and personal injury cases. Consequent to his defense of an African American who was forced into a form of slavery after incarceration, Black was befriended by A. O. Lane. When Lane was elected to the Birmingham City Commission in 1911, he asked Black to serve as a court judge. In 1912, Black resigned that seat in order to return to practicing law full-time and he was not done with public service, in 1914, he began a four-year term as the Jefferson County Prosecuting Attorney. Three years later, during World War I, Black resigned in order to join the United States Army and he served in the 81st Field Artillery, but was not assigned to Europe. He joined the Birmingham Civitan Club during this time, eventually serving as president of the group and he remained an active member throughout his life, occasionally contributing articles to Civitan publications. On February 23,1921, he married Josephine Foster, with whom he would have three children, Hugo L. Black, II, an attorney, Sterling Foster, Josephine died in 1951, in 1957, Black married Elizabeth Seay DeMeritte. In 1926, Black sought election to the United States Senate from Alabama, since the Democratic Party dominated Alabama politics at the time, he easily defeated his Republican opponent, E. H. Dryer, winning 80. 9% of the vote. He was reelected in 1932, winning 86. 3% of the vote against Republican J. Theodore Johnson, Senator Black gained a reputation as a tenacious investigator. In 1934, for example, he chaired the committee that looked into the contracts awarded to air mail carriers under Postmaster General Walter Folger Brown, an inquiry which led to the Air Mail scandal. In order to correct what he termed abuses of fraud and collusion resulting from the Air Mail Act of 1930, he introduced the Black-McKellar Bill, the following year he participated in a Senate committees investigation of lobbying practices. In 1935, Black became chairman of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor, in 1937 he sponsored the Black-Connery Bill, which sought to establish a national minimum wage and a maximum workweek of thirty hours
4.
William O. Douglas
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William Orville Douglas was an American jurist and politician who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Nominated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Douglas was confirmed at the age of 40 and his term, lasting 36 years and 209 days, is the longest term in the history of the Supreme Court. Douglas holds a number of records as a Supreme Court Justice and he was the 79th person appointed and confirmed to the bench of that court. In 1975 Time magazine called Douglas the most doctrinaire and committed civil libertarian ever to sit on the court. Douglas was born in 1898 in Maine Township, Otter Tail County, Minnesota, the son of Julia Bickford and William Douglas and his family moved to California, and then to Cleveland, Washington. At age two Douglas suffered through an intestinal colic, which Douglas would claim had been polio and his mother attributed his recovery to a miracle, telling Douglas that one day he would be President of the United States. His father died in Portland, Oregon, in 1904, when Douglas was six years old, Douglas would later claim his mother had been left destitute. After moving the family from town to town in the West, his mother, William, like the rest of the Douglas family, worked at odd jobs to earn extra money, and a college education appeared to be unaffordable. He was the valedictorian at Yakima High School and did enough in school to earn a scholarship to Whitman College in Walla Walla. While at Whitman, Douglas became a member of Beta Theta Pi fraternity and he worked at various jobs while attending school, including as a waiter and janitor during the school year, and at a cherry orchard in the summer. Picking cherries, Douglas would say later, inspired him to a legal career. He once said of his early interest in the law, I worked among the very, very poor, the migrant laborers, the Chicanos, I saw cruelty and hardness, and my impulse was to be a force in other developments in the law. Douglas was elected Phi Beta Kappa, participated on the debate team, after graduating in 1920 with a B. A. in English and economics, he taught English and Latin at Yakima high schools for the next two years, hoping to earn enough to attend law school. Finally, he said, I decided it was impossible to save money by teaching. He traveled to New York, with hopes to attend the Columbia Law School, six months later, Douglas funds were running out. The appointments office at the law school told him that a New York firm wanted a student to prepare a correspondence course for law. Douglas earned $600 for his work, enabling him to stay in school, hired for similar projects, he saved $1,000 by semesters end. His wife Mildred worked as a schoolteacher to support him throughout law school and he graduated fifth in his class in 1925, although he later claimed to have been second
5.
Tom C. Clark
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Clark was born in Dallas, Texas, on September 23,1899, the son of Virginia Maxey, and William Henry Clark. His parents had moved from Mississippi to Texas, his father became the youngest man ever elected president of the Texas Bar Association to that time. Young Tom attended the public schools including Dallas High School and received honors for debate and oratory. He then attended the Virginia Military Institute for a year, in 1918 Clark volunteered to serve in World War I with the U. S. Army, but his weight was too low. However, the Texas National Guard accepted him, and he served as an infantryman, after the war ended, Clark enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin, receiving an A. B. degree in 1921. He then began studies and received a law degree from the University of Texas School of Law. He was a brother of Delta Tau Delta fraternity, and later served as their international president, upon admission to the Texas bar, Clark set up a law practice in his home town from 1922 to 1937. He left private practice to serve Dallas as civil district attorney from 1927 to 1932 and he then resumed his private practice for four years. Clark, a Democrat, joined the Justice Department in 1937 as an assistant to the U. S. attorney general. He later moved to the antitrust division, then run by legendary trust-buster Thurman Arnold, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor the following year, Clark was named by Attorney General Francis Biddle as the Civilian Coordinator of the Alien Enemy Control Program. Clark also was appointed to head up a new War Frauds unit created to investigate and prosecute corruption by government contractors, during this period he worked closely with, and befriended Harry Truman, whose Truman Committee was investigating war frauds. One, William Colepaugh, was an American citizen, while the other, the prosecution took place before a military tribunal on Governor’s Island in New York, only the third such military trial in the nation’s history. Media coverage of Clark’s nomination was generally favorable, and reflected the strength of Clark’s legal and political skills, as a short article in Life Magazine stated, “He is a good prosecutor and good lawyer, but most of all he is a thorough politician. ”. As attorney general, Clark initially continued to focus a good deal of the energy on prosecuting war fraud crimes. Clark and the White House also challenged John Lewis, the head of the United Mine Workers union, Clark played an important role in support of President Truman’s pioneering efforts in civil rights, helping to bring the power of the federal government behind civil rights enforcement. The most important of the briefs he filed was in Shelley v. Kraemer, Clark also helped guide the creation of a presidentially established committee on civil rights. The report had an important and lasting influence on civil rights providing, as Tom Clark later said, important early anti-Communist cases during his tenure include the Smith Act, Coplon, and Hiss-Chambers cases. Clarks anti-communist efforts also emphasized the promotion of the values of democracy, History, including the Bill of Rights, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Mayflower Compact
6.
Byron White
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Byron Raymond Whizzer White won fame both as an American football halfback and as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Born and raised in Colorado, White played in the National Football League for three seasons and practiced law for 15 years before his Supreme Court appointment, White was the Colorado state chair of John F. Kennedys 1960 presidential campaign. White was appointed to the Supreme Court by Kennedy in 1962 and he viewed his own court decisions as based on the facts of each case rather than as representative of a specific legal philosophy. He retired in 1993 and is the twelfth longest-serving justice in Supreme Court history and he was the first Supreme Court Justice from the state of Colorado. Born in Fort Collins, Colorado, White was the son of Maude Elizabeth and Alpha Albert White. He was raised in the town of Wellington, where he obtained his high school diploma in 1934. He joined the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity and served as student body president his senior year. Graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1938, he won a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford in England, after deferring it for a year to play pro football, he attended Hertford College, Oxford. During this time in England, he acquainted with Joe and John Kennedy. As a senior, White led Colorado to an undefeated 8–0 regular season in 1937 and he was the runner-up for the Heisman Trophy, behind Yale quarterback Clint Frank, and also played basketball and baseball at CU. The basketball team advanced to the finals of the inaugural National Invitation Tournament at Madison Square Garden in March 1938, White had originally planned to attend Oxford in 1938 and not play pro football. He was selected fourth overall in the 1938 NFL draft, held in December 1937, by the NFLs Pittsburgh Pirates, Oxford allowed White to delay his start to early 1939, so he accepted the Pittsburgh offer in August and played the 1938 season in the NFL. He led the league in rushing as a 21-year-old rookie and was its highest-paid player and he sailed to England in early 1939, with the intent of staying for three years. With the outbreak of World War II in late summer, White returned to the United States and he was admitted to Yale Law School in early October 1939, a week after classes began, and also played for the Detroit Lions in 1940 and 1941. In three NFL seasons, he played in 33 games and he led the league in rushing yards in 1938 and 1940, and he was one of the first big money NFL players, making US$15,000 per year. His NFL career was cut short when he entered the U. S. Navy in 1942, after the war and he was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1954. During the war, White served as an officer in the U. S. Navy. He had originally wanted to join the Marines, but was out due to being colorblind
7.
Virginia
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Virginia is a state located in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, as well as in the historic Southeast. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth are shaped by the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Chesapeake Bay, the capital of the Commonwealth is Richmond, Virginia Beach is the most populous city, and Fairfax County is the most populous political subdivision. The Commonwealths estimated population as of 2014 is over 8.3 million, the areas history begins with several indigenous groups, including the Powhatan. In 1607 the London Company established the Colony of Virginia as the first permanent New World English colony, slave labor and the land acquired from displaced Native American tribes each played a significant role in the colonys early politics and plantation economy. Although the Commonwealth was under one-party rule for nearly a century following Reconstruction, the Virginia General Assembly is the oldest continuous law-making body in the New World. The state government was ranked most effective by the Pew Center on the States in both 2005 and 2008 and it is unique in how it treats cities and counties equally, manages local roads, and prohibits its governors from serving consecutive terms. Virginias economy changed from agricultural to industrial during the 1960s and 1970s. Virginia has an area of 42,774.2 square miles, including 3,180.13 square miles of water. Virginias boundary with Maryland and Washington, D. C. extends to the mark of the south shore of the Potomac River. The southern border is defined as the 36° 30′ parallel north, the border with Tennessee was not settled until 1893, when their dispute was brought to the U. S. Supreme Court. The Chesapeake Bay separates the portion of the Commonwealth from the two-county peninsula of Virginias Eastern Shore. The bay was formed from the river valleys of the Susquehanna River. Many of Virginias rivers flow into the Chesapeake Bay, including the Potomac, Rappahannock, York, and James, the Tidewater is a coastal plain between the Atlantic coast and the fall line. It includes the Eastern Shore and major estuaries of Chesapeake Bay, the Piedmont is a series of sedimentary and igneous rock-based foothills east of the mountains which were formed in the Mesozoic era. The region, known for its clay soil, includes the Southwest Mountains around Charlottesville. The Blue Ridge Mountains are a province of the Appalachian Mountains with the highest points in the state. The Ridge and Valley region is west of the mountains and includes the Great Appalachian Valley, the region is carbonate rock based and includes Massanutten Mountain. The Cumberland Plateau and the Cumberland Mountains are in the southwest corner of Virginia, in this region, rivers flow northwest, with a dendritic drainage system, into the Ohio River basin
8.
Stanley plan
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The legislative program was named for Governor Thomas B. Stanley, who proposed the program and successfully pushed for its enactment, the Stanley plan was a critical element in the policy of massive resistance to the Brown ruling advocated by U. S. The plan was enacted by the Virginia Assembly on September 22,1956, a federal court struck down a portion of the Stanley plan as unconstitutional in January 1957. By 1960, nearly all of the elements of the plan had been struck down by the U. S. Supreme Court and other federal. The constitutional invalidity of the Stanley plan led new governor of Virginia, James Lindsay Almond, the Supreme Court declared portions of passive resistance unconstitutional in 1964 and again in 1968. Although agitation for an end to segregation in schools had been building in the United States since the end of World War II. The initial reaction of most Virginia politicians and newspapers to the Brown decision was restrained, from the 1920s to the late 1960s, Virginia politics had been dominated by the Byrd Organization, a political machine led by Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr. Top leaders in the Byrd Organization, such as Governor Thomas B. Stanley and then-Attorney General James Lindsay Almond, Jr. were also at first reserved in their reaction to the Brown ruling. However, this changed when James J. Kilpatrick, editor of The Richmond News Leader in Richmond, Virginia, quickly adopted a defiant and unyielding opposition to racial integration of public schools. Kilpatrick adopted the pre-American Civil War constitutional theory of interposition, kilpatricks hardening position, historian Joseph J. Thorndike has written, likely. helped stiffen the resolve of several key figures, especially Byrd. On June 18,1954, political leaders in Virginias Southside met and they began calling themselves the Defenders of State Sovereignty and Civil Liberties, and members included U. S. Congressmen William Munford Tuck and Watkins Abbitt as well as state senators Charles Moses and they selected Farmville businessman Robert B. Crawford as their president. Stanley, himself from the Southside, was influenced by the strong segregationist sentiments expressed at this meeting. Six days later, Governor Stanley announced he would use every means at my command to continue segregated schools in Virginia. On August 30,1954, Governor Stanley announced the appointment of a commission, chaired by State Senator Garland Gray, officially titled the Virginia Public Education Commission, it was more popularly known as the Gray Commission. In October 1954, a group called the Defenders of State Sovereignty. Although limited primarily to the Southside and numbering no more than 15,000 members, the crisis over school desegregation worsened throughout 1955. On May 31,1955, the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ordered that school desegregation occur with all deliberate speed
9.
Archibald Cox
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Archibald Cox, Jr. was an American lawyer, legal scholar and professor, whose career alternated between academia and government. As a Harvard Law School faculty member, he one of the early experts in federal labor law. In 1948 he published the first case book on law for use in law schools. A prolific writer, he published dozens of articles on developments in labor relations, on return to Harvard he expanded on his experience in government to write on and teach constitutional law. As a high-profile liberal, he was chosen to head a blue ribbon commission that investigated the student strikes that closed down Columbia University in the Spring of 1968, after that experience, he became Harvards point man dealing with student disorders at Harvard for the next three years. When Cox refused an order from the White House to seek no further tapes or presidential materials. Coxs calm, reasonable and impeccably dignified explanations of his positions earned him overwhelming support among the professional bar and his firing produced a public relations disaster for Nixon and set in motion impeachment proceedings. In the end, the United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously against the president, rather than face impeachment and trial with the tapes as evidence, Richard Nixon became the only United States president to resign. Cox returned to teaching, lecturing and writing for the rest of his life, giving his opinions on the role of the court in the development of the law and the role of the lawyer in society. Although he was recommended to President Jimmy Carter for a seat on the First Circuit Court of Appeals and he was appointed to head several public-service, watchdog and good-government organizations, including serving for 12 years as head of Common Cause. The New York Times summarized his career in a 1992 opinion, Mr. Cox devoted his considerable prestige, energy, with public trust in government at a dangerously low ebb, Mr. Coxs message is more powerful than ever. Cox was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, the son of Archibald and Frances Fanny Bruen Perkins Cox and his father Archibald Sr. was the son of a Manhattan lawyer who rose to prominence as a patent and trademark lawyer, and who wrote Coxs Manual on Trade Marks. When Rowland Cox died suddenly in 1900 Archibald Sr. inherited his fathers solo practice almost right out of law school and he built on that start to become successful in his own right. His most prominent achievement was securing the red cross as the trademark of Johnson & Johnson and he also served as a member of the New Jersey Rapid Transit Commission. Coxs mother Fanny was the granddaughter of two equally eminent men, Charles Callahan Perkins, the son of a wealthy merchant, never had need to earn money his entire life. So after Harvard, he studied drawing in Rome, established a studio in Paris, back in New England he dabbled in music, composing, presiding over the Handel and Haydn Society and becoming the largest subscriber to Boston Music Hall. Later he lectured and published books on art history and became one of the founders of Bostons Museum of Fine Arts and his grandson Maxwell Perkins, Coxs uncle, was the famed editor at the publishing house of Charles Scribners Sons. In August 1886 Fannys grandfather Perkins died on being thrown from a carriage driving with Fannys other grandfather William M. Evarts near his estate in Windsor
Works related to Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (377 U.S. 218) at Wikisource