Supreme Court Opinions

Judicial interpretation is the way in which the judiciary construes the law, particularly constitutional documents, legislation and frequently used vocabulary. This is an important issue in some common law jurisdictions such as the United States, Australia and Canada, because the supreme courts of those nations can overturn laws made by their legislatures via a process called judic

In American constitutional law, a statute is void for vagueness and unenforceable if it is too vague for the average citizen to understand, and a constitutionally-protected interest cannot tolerate permissible activity to be chilled within the range of the vagueness (either because the statute is a penal statute with criminal or quasi-criminal civil penalties, or because the intere

Overseas and nonresident citizens. U.S. citizens residing overseas who would otherwise have the right to vote are guaranteed the right to vote in federal elections by the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) of 1986. As a practical matter, individual states implement UOCAVA. A citizen who has never resided in the United States can vote if a parent is eligibl

Young adults. A third voting rights movement was won in the 1960’s to lower the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen. Activists noted that most of the young men who were being drafted to fight in the Vietnam War were too young to have any voice in the selection of the leaders who were sending them to fight. Some states had already lowered the voting age: notably Georgia, Kentuc

Legal challenges to disfranchisement. Although African Americans quickly began legal challenges to such provisions in the 19th century, it was years before any were successful before the U.S. Supreme Court. Booker T Washington, better known for his public stance of trying to work within societal constraints of the period at Tuskegee University, secretly helped fund and arrange repr

Religious test. In several British North American colonies, before and after the 1776 Declaration of Independence, Jews, Quakers, Catholics, and/or Atheists were excluded from the franchise and/or from running for elections. The Delaware Constitution of 1776 stated that "Every person who shall be chosen a member of either house, or appointed to any office or place of trust, before

Roe v Wade was a 1971, 1973 landmark decision by the US Supreme Court. It ruled that a state law that banned abortion was unconstitutional. The 7 to 2 decision had Chief Justice Warren E Burger and six other Justices vote for "Jane Roe" and Justices William Rehnquist and Byron White vote against it. The decision divided the United States and is still controversial. People became di

Shurtleff v City of Boston, (2022), was a United States Supreme Court case related to the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Background. Boston, Massachusetts allows groups to have their flags flown over Boston City Hall. A Christian group, Camp Constitution, sought to have the city fly a Christian flag. Camp Constitution and its director Hal Shurtleff teach that th

Milestones of national franchise changes 1789: The Constitution grants the states the power to set voting requirements. Generally, states limited this right to property-owning or tax-paying white males (about 6% of the population). 1790: The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited citizenship to "free white persons." In practice, only white male property owners could naturalize and acqu

Voting rights in the United States, specifically the enfranchisement and disenfranchisement of different groups, has been a moral and political issue throughout United States history. Eligibility to vote in the United States is governed by the United States Constitution and by federal and state laws. Several constitutional amendments (the Fifteenth, Nineteenth, and Twenty-sixth spe