Heart of Atlanta v. United States
The case of Heart of Atlanta v. United States began with two parties. The Heart of Atlanta Motel was in downtown Atlanta and serviced many travelers along the interstates running through Atlanta. The owner, Moreton Rolleston, refused to rent rooms to black customers traveling along the interstate, which was in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He filed suit against the U.S. and the Act stating that it was unconstitutional because Congress doesn’t have the right to control interstate commerce. The U.S. countersued stating that under the Commerce Clause, Congress has the power “to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.” (LII / Legal Information
…show more content…
We find that in §201(a) states that “All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, as defined in this section, without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin.” (Heart of Atlanta V. United States) This affects the hotel because this clause allows blacks to come into their establishment and partake of its services. The court also argued how they are supported under the “commerce clause” as far as interstate commerce in the trade routes. The trade market is an intercourse between trade and states, they explain that all of this aspects tie together in a way. In the decision, Justice Clark mentioned that people have started traveling more and that blacks were still being discriminated against even when it comes to travel and commerce. Even though the court’s decision was unanimous there were two justices who were not fully agreeable with the decision. Justice William Douglas concurred with the others but was reluctant because the case didn’t solely rest on the Commerce Clause. He stated, “My reluctance is not due to any conviction that Congress lacks power to regulate commerce in the interests of human rights. It is, rather, my belief that the right of people to be free of …show more content…
One in particular was where the hotel made the case about the Constitution and when the writers drafted it they wrote it during a time that was acceptable to them and now that we are 200 years after that we still haven’t changed some of the terminology or at least updated the meaning of such terms. Another convincing argument was when the Solicitor General made note of the Declaration of Independence and that all men are created equal but we have failed in that attempt and Title II of the Civil Rights Act was to help rectify that situation. One of the least convincing parts was the hotel’s use of saying that the Act was in direct violation of some key amendments in our Constitution. In saying that Title II was in violation of the Thirteenth Amendment when that specific amendment was written during the abolishment of slavery and any form of it was a useless point. The Amendment was written during a time when the Emancipation Proclamation was drafted and that amendment was to solidify that document. Also to use the Commerce Clause as its basis to file suit was unjust and
In the controversial court case, McCulloch v. Maryland, Chief Justice John Marshall’s verdict gave Congress the implied powers to carry out any laws they deemed to be “necessary and proper” to the state of the Union. In this 1819 court case, the state of Maryland tried to sue James McCulloch, a cashier at the Second Bank of the United States, for opening a branch in Baltimore. McCulloch refused to pay the tax and therefore the issue was brought before the courts; the decision would therefore change the way Americans viewed the Constitution to this day.
According to the Justice Kagan, in the case of Florida vs. Harris, “we considered how a court should determine if the “alert” of drug-detention during a traffic stop provides probable cause to search a vehicle” (Kagan).
Another similar case was the Dred Scott Decision. Dred Scott, being a black man during the 1820's, was yet again considered inferior to bring his case to the court. From a reader's point of view, Dred Scott's case was very legit. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 made Scott a free man. All of the blacks going through the 35'36 altitude/latitude line were said to be free men. When Dred Scott entered Illinois, he entered thinking he was a free man, until his owner assaulted him upon the return. Dred Scott did his best to bring not one but three assault cases to the court against his "owner", John F. A. Sanford; however, the court dismissed him as inferior to take any participation or even demand a fair trial. The court also called upon the Missouri Compromise as unconstitutional because of deprivation of personal property, which in this case was Dred Scott - a property of John Sanford. Eventually the sons of Sanford purchased Scott and his wife, and set them free. Scott died just a year after that.
The Tennessee v. Garner case impacted law enforcement agencies today by utilizing the Fourth Amendment right of not using deadly force to prevent a suspect from fleeing unless the officer is in imminent danger of their life. Consequently, before this was set into place, an officer had the right to use deadly force on a fleeing suspect by all means.” The first time the Court dealt with the use of force was in Tennessee v. Garner, in Garner, a police officer used deadly force despite being "reasonably sure" that the suspect was an unarmed teenager "of slight build" who was running away from him” (Gross,2016). Whereas, with Graham v. Conner case was surrounded around excessive force which also has an impact on law enforcement agencies in today’s society as well. “All claims that law enforcement officers have used excessive force deadly or not in the course of an arrest, investigatory stop, or other “seizure” of s free citizen should be analyzed under the Fourth Amendment and its “reasonableness” standard” (Doerner,2016).
The case Worcester v. Georgia (1832) was a basis for the discussion of the issue of states' rights versus the federal government as played out in the administration of President Andrew Jackson and its battle with the Supreme Court. In addition to the constitutional issues involved, the momentum of the westward movement and popular support for Indian resettlement pitted white man against Indian. All of these factors came together in the Worcester case, which alarmed the independence of the Cherokee Nation, but which was not enforced. This examines the legal issues and tragic consequences of Indian resettlement.
The court case of Plessy vs. Ferguson created nationwide controversy in the United States due to the fact that its outcome would ultimately affect every citizen of our country. On Tuesday, June 7th, 1892, Mr. Homer Plessy purchased a first class ticket on the East Louisiana Railroad for a trip from New Orleans to Covington. He then entered a passenger car and took a vacant seat in a coach where white passengers were also sitting. There was another coach assigned to people who weren’t of the white race, but this railroad was a common carrier and was not authorized to discriminate passengers based off of their race. (“Plessy vs. Ferguson, syllabus”).Mr. Plessy was a “Creole of Color”, a person who traces their heritage back to some of the Caribbean, French, and Spanish who settled into Louisiana before it was part of the US (“The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow”). Even though Plessy was only one eighth African American, and could pass for a full white man, still he was threatened to be penalized and ejected from the train if he did not vacate to the non-white coach (“Plessy vs. Ferguson, syllabus). In ...
The Impact of the Dred Scott Case on the United States The Dred Scott Case had a huge impact on the United States as it is today. The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments have called it the worst Supreme Court decision ever rendered and was later overturned. The Dred Scott Decision was a key case regarding the issue of slavery; the case started as a slave seeking his rightful freedom and mushroomed into a whole lot more. 65
Examples of this include the Supreme Court’s ruling on National League of Cities v Usery in 1976, where it was disputed whether the national government had the authority to set a minimum wage standard for the states to follow, in this particular case’s ruling, the Supreme Court decided no, the national government did not have the right to do so. Nine years later the Supreme overturned this previous ruling in the case of Garcia v San Antonio Metro Transit
The first court case I will talk about is McCulloch vs maryland. This case was about America’s ability to tax the property of government buildings. Maryland was taxing a government bank that was owned by McCulloch. McCulloch didn 't agree with this ruling and refused to pay the tax. This case went to the Supreme Court. The Court agreed with McCollugh and cre...
Defendant Freddie Lee Hall filed a motion to declare Florida Statute 921.137 (Florida Statute) as contrary to Atkins v. Virginia (2002) and, thus, unconstitutional. Hall, convicted in 1981 for the murder of Karol Hurst, was initially sentenced to death in September 1982. For three years, he fought his sentence, filing “a motion to vacate, a petition for writ of habeas corpus and an application for a stay of execution, all of which were denied” . In 1986, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals heard his appeal and reversed part of the lower court’s ruling, a decision granted when the court found Hall “entitled to a hearing on the issues of his absence from the courtroom and whether he deliberately bypassed his ineffective assistance of counsel claim” .
There are many differences and similarities between The Scottsboro Case and the Tom Robinson’s case of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Some similarities between the two cases are that the defendants are African Americans who are falsely accused of a crime they never committed. This reveals that the cases were during the time where racism was at its worst. All the defendants were accused of rape and the two women testified against black men, like what Mayella Ewell did. And the judges were all white. Some differences are that the Scottsboro case included nine men, while Tom Robinson was the only man in his trial. And all but the 12 year old was sentenced to death, while Tom was shot later on after the trial. Lastly, after the state retried
THESIS: Mapp v. Ohio and Miranda v. Arizona are Supreme Court cases that prove to be essential in protecting and strengthening individual rights in the United States.
Segregation in itself is an issue of legality, but this case especially was an unfair One. When segregation was the law it was brought up in the courts because segregation itself may clash with the fourteenth amendment, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside" (Compton's 6). This amendment states that all people born or naturalized in the USA are citizens. This would mean that Blacks are citizens and have just as many rights as any other citizen, but white lawyers and court officials found ways around this. They said that being a citizen doesn't have anything to do with equal rights between different races (Tourolaw). "The judge at the trial was John Howard Ferguson, a lawyer from Massachusetts who had previously declared the Separate Car Act `unconstitutional on trains that traveled through several states'. In Plessy's case, however, he decided that the state could choose to regulate railroad companies that operated only within Louisiana" (Virtualscholar1 1).
Plessy v. Ferguson , a very important case of 1896 in which the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the legality of racial segregation. At the time of the ruling, segregation between blacks and whites already existed in most schools, restaurants, and other public facilities in the American South. In the Plessy decision, the Supreme Court ruled that such segregation did not violate the 14th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. This amendment provides equal protection of the law to all U.S. citizens, regardless of race. The court ruled in Plessy that racial segregation was legal as long as the separate facilities for blacks and whites were “equal.”
Throughout American History, many minorities have fallen victim to cruel discrimination and inequality, African Americans were one of such minorities that greatly suffered from the white majority’s upper hand. After the end of the Civil War and the Reconstruction period following it, many people, especially the Southern population, were extremely against African Americans obtaining equal rights in the American society. Due to this, these opponents did everything in their power to limit and even fully strip African Americans of their rights. The Supreme Court case of Plessy v Ferguson in 1896 is an excellent example of the obstacles put forth by the white population against their black counterparts in their long and arduous fight for civil liberty and equality. Even though the court upheld the discriminatory Louisiana law with an 8-1 decision, John Marshall Harlan’s dissent in the case played a significant role in the history of the United States for it predicted all the injustice African Americans would be forced to undergo for many more years, mainly due to this landmark decision.