Texas v. White Case The case was Texas v. White. The state of Texas brought suit in the United States Supreme Court to have certain United States government bonds declared the property of the state, and to prevent the present holders of the bonds from collecting upon them. Texas had owned the bonds before the Civil War. As a means of financing during the war, while Texas was a member of the Confederacy, the bonds were sold. Texas now claimed that the sale was void and the bonds still belonged to the state. The suit raised two formidable constitutional questions. First, Texas had brought suit directly in the Supreme Court. Under the Constitution, only a state may do this. These were the days of Reconstruction, and Texas had a military government; it did not yet have representatives in the United States Congress. Was Texas a state within the meaning of the Constitution so that it could bring this suit? Second, the bonds had been sold during the Civil War by the duly organized government. If Texas was at that time no longer a state of the Union in legal contemplation, then the sale was perfectly proper. If, on the other hand, Texas was legally a state, then its government during the Confederacy was a usurpation and its action was void. Was Texas legally a state of the Union during the Civil War? The Court ordered the bonds restored to Texas. The implication of this decision reached far beyond the precise legal question answered: the United States is one nation, and the ties uniting the states cannot be severed by any of them. And there was another implication, less important but still significant: the southern states were enabled to stand as states in the Union, and to assert their rights as states. The days of Reconstruction a... ... middle of paper ... ...tent to file an original bill here. 3. Assuming that she was, a question whether the respective defendants, any, all, or who of them, were proper subjects for the injunction prayed, as holding the bonds without sufficient title, and herein -- and more particularly as respected Hardenberg, and Birch, Murray & Co. -- a question of negotiable paper, and the extent to which holders, asserting themselves holders bona fide and for value, of paper payable "to bearer," held it discharged of precedent equities. 4. A question as to the effect of the payments, at the treasury, of the bonds of Hardenberg and of the four bonds of Birch, Murray & Co. Opinions CHASE, C.J., Opinion of the Court The CHIEF JUSTICE delivered the opinion of the court. Sources Bibliography: 109 H. Holzer, Sweet Land of Liberty? (Costa Mesa: Common Sense Press, 1983).
Facts: On October 3, 1974, Memphis Police Officers Hymon and Wright were dispatched to answer a “prowler inside call.” When the police arrived at the scene, a neighbor gestured to the house where she had heard glass breaking and that someone was breaking into the house. While one of the officer radioed that they were on the scene, the other officer went to the rear of the house hearing a door slam and saw someone run across the backyard. The suspect, Edward Garner stopped at a 6-feet-high fence at the edge of the yard and proceeded to climb the fence as the police officer called out “police, halt.” The police officer figured that if Garner made it over the fence he would get away and also “figured” that Garner was unarmed. Officer Hymon then shot him, hitting him in the back of the head. In using deadly force to prevent the escape of Garner, Hymon used the argument that actions were made under the authority of the Tennessee statute and pursuant to Police Department policy. Although the department’s policy was slightly more restrictive than the statute it still allowed the use of deadly force in cases of burglary. Garner’s fathers’ argument was made that his son was shot unconstitutionally because he was captured and shot possessing ten dollars that he had stolen and being unarmed showing no threat of danger to the officer. The incident was then reviewed by the Memphis Police Firearm’s Revie...
In the book Storm Over Texas, by Joel H. Silbey the critical controversy of North vs. South is displayed. The book goes into great detail of the wild moments leading into the Civil War, the political dysfunction that ran throughout Texas, and many reasons the American Civil War sparked up in the first place. This book truly captives great Texas history and has valid information and points of our states different point of views on history.
A very controversial court case in American history was Texas vs. Johnson (1984). In 1984, a man named Gregory Lee Johnson followed a group of anti – Reagan protesters to oppose the American exploitation of third world countries. This act of rebellion resulted in the burning of the American flag. Out of a total of approximately one hundred demonstrators who were involved in this ordeal, Johnson was solely charged with a crime. Johnson was arrested under Texas law, which made the burning of the United States or Texas flags crimes. Johnson was convicted and sentenced to one year in jail and fined two thousand dollars for his crime in restitution. Texas reasoned that the police were preventing the breach of peace; consider the flag a symbol of national unity. At Johnson's court trial, he was convicted of aiding, abetting and encouraging the burning of the Texan flag. This, in turn, made Johnson guilty under Texas state law.
On June 23, 1845, the Republic of Texas was annexed to the U.S. as a slave state. Foley notes "the annexation of Texas as a slave state…became the great white hope of northern expansionists anxious to emancipate the nation from blacks, who, it was hoped, would find a home among the kindred population of 'colored races' in Mexico."(20) But rather than uniting as kindred races, discord between poor whites, African Americans and Mexicans resulted from competition for farmland as either tenant farmers or sharecroppers.
Question Presented: Petitioner Giridar C. Sekhar was convicted of extortion under the federal law for potentially exposing an extramarital affair unless the general counsel for the state comptroller recommended that the state pension fund invest in a fund managed by Sekhar’s company. The meaning of the word “property” would be determined by the courts under the federal extortion law. They would also decide whether the General Counsel had recommended the “property” and if it could be subject to extortion by the federal law. The petitioner had argued for a narrow of the meaning or definition of the word “Property”. He wished that it were brought to the meaning of something that is of value and that is transferable.
Harvey Leroy Sossamon III was denied the ability to use the prison chapels, in the state prison in which he was being held (Oyez.org). Sossamon had been in the Robertson Unit of the Correctional Institutions Division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice since 2002 (Fasoro). His claims for use were that of religious purposes, the state prison warden in fact denied all inmates that were cell restricted access to such activities. Sossamon was entitled to the use the chapel, in fact it was in his rights. However the prison inmates were provided with different ways and places to practice their religion. Regardless Sossamon explained that the alternatives were absent of Christian symbol. In fact Sossamon witnessed Muslim inmates receive better treatment (Findlaw.com). This came in the forms of treatment, meals and other necessities. Sossamon also added that the alternatives were noisy from the exterior and unfit for religious worship due in part to bad conditions (Fasoro). Sossamon also confirmed if the inmates did not cease prayer when ordered by the guards they were subjected to retaliation or other physical mistreatment (Findlaw.com).Sossamon to advantage of his Secular activity time and began to study the law. Finally when the inmates were on lockdown, could not participate in religious activities but could still participate in schedule secular activities (Fasoro).
Texas v. White. Cornell University Law School Supreme Court Collection, 1850. Web. 03 Dec. 2009.
Lawrence v. Texas In the case Lawrence v. Texas (539 U.S. 558, 2003) which was the United States Supreme Court case the criminal prohibition of the homosexual pederasty was invalidated in Texas. The same issue has been already addressed in 1989 in the case Bowers v. Hardwick, however, the constitutional protection of sexual privacy was not found at that time. Lawrence overruled Bowers and held that sexual conduct was the right protected by the due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. The effects of the ruling were quite widespread and led to invalidation of the similar laws throughout the United States that tried to criminalize the homosexual activity of adults who were acting in privacy.
The Court has long recognized that the right to procreate is a fundamental right protected by the Constitution. In Skinner v. Oklahoma, the Court overturned a state statute that required mandatory sterilization of any person that was convicted of certain habitual crimes. The Court in Skinner states that the right to procreate was a fundamental right; the Court limited the state’s power to enforce involuntary sterilization.
1942 Skinner v. Oklahoma states that procreation is a fundamental constitutional right. In 2008 judge Charlie Baird sentenced Felicia Salazar to a probationary term of ten years for injury to her 19-month-old child. After the child’s father beat the adolescent Felicia failed to seek medical attention for her child which greatly disturbed the judge. This led to the judge adding a strange condition to the probationary conditions. Judge Baird told her she was not allowed to conceive or bear a child during her probationary sentence. In 2012 Judge Tim Boyle ordered 44-year-old Corey Curtis to stop procreating until he could support his nine children which were fathered by six different women. Owing $90,000 in child support he was conditioned to a three-year probationary judgement. The questions that surfaced from this controversial topic are; did judges Baird and Boyle’s
In simple terms, a state attorney general is essentially the state’s lawyer, but he/she has many more responsibilities than that. It should come as no surprise that a state as large as Texas requires a lot of its government officials. A person in this position is the chief legal officer and is charged with protecting the interests of the state. This is typically done through giving legal advice or court proceedings. As the state’s lawyer, they can advise other Texas government agencies on how to make sure they are operating legally. More commonly, lawyers usually operate in court, and the attorney general is no different. If the state of Texas is ever directly involved in a case, the attorney general represents their state in both local and federal courtrooms such as taxes owed to the state or against those that violate any environmental-protection laws ("Attorney General," 2010). Being in the executive branch, the Texas attorney general reports to the governor: “The attorney general shall report to the governor on the first Monday of December of each even-numbered year. The report must include the following information for the preceding two years: (1) a summary of the cases in which the state was a party that was acted on by the supreme court and court of criminal appeals; and (2) a summary of civil cases in which the state was a party that were prosecuted or defended by the attorney general
Texans wanted their government to be strong. “This is a Union of equal states, and no state can force another state either to remain in it or withdraw from it” (Doc. C). But the Union felt as if states should not secede from their country. Texas felt otherwise. “No state upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union” (Doc. C). “The crisis upon us involves not only the rights of self government, but the maintenance of a great principle in the law of nations...The true theory of our (national) government as an association of sovereignties ( independant states), and not a blended mass of people in one social compact” (Doc C). The Confederacy wanted the right to self govern themselves, but still blend with other countries and states. Texas, along with all the other Confederacy states, wanted to be able to have their own laws that would acquiesce slavery. President Abraham Lincoln felt that states in the United States should not be allowed to have
The Supreme Court had to find if Johnson's conviction of burning of the flag and breaking a Texas law was consistent with the First Amendment. In a 5-4 decision, the court found that it was not consistent with the First Amendment and that Johnson's conviction under Texas law was unconstitutional. Justice Brennan delivered the opinion of the court. In order to convict Johnson, the state asserted two interests: preserving the flag as a symbol of national unity and preventing the breaches of the peace.
In 1528, African Texans had begun to arrive. From 1821 to the Texas Revolution of 1836 slavery had began to grow. By 1860 30 percent of Texas Population was enslaved. In 1861 of February, Texas voted for secession. But freedom didn’t come until June 19, 1865. There as an organization formed to fight for equality rights of African Americans. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in 1909. In 1950, African Texans had won a major case that eliminated segregation in the South’s graduate and professional schools. The Sweatt v. Painter case was make a case by Thurgood Marshall and William J. Durham both member of the NAACP. They obtained the University of Texas Law School to accept black students. Another case was the Brown v. Board of Education it was filed against Topeka, Kansas School board by Oliver Brown a parent of one of the students who was African American. It brought about desegregation of schools. There is no doubt that these two cases were a struggle for racial equality in
On the 11th of June, 1982 following the conviction of a criminal offense, Robert Johnson was sentenced to two years probation. The terms of his probation included his person, posessions, and residence being searched upon reasonable request. When a search warrant was executed for Johnson’s roommate, officers testified that with enough reasonable suspicion, they were able to search Johnson’s living area as well.