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| Roe v. Wade, No. 70-18,
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, January 22, 1973, Decided
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Overview: Plaintiffs and intervenor appealed directly to the instant Court on the injunctive rulings. The State cross-appealed from the declaratory judgment. The Court affirmed the judgment, holding that abortion was within the scope of the personal liberty guaranteed by the Due Process Clause. This right was not absolute, but could be regulated by narrowly drawn legislation aimed at vindicating legitimate, compelling state interests in the mothers health and safety and the potentiality of human life. The former became compelling, and was thus grounds for regulation after the first trimester of pregnancy, beyond which the state could regulate abortion to preserve and protect maternal health. The latter became compelling at viability, upon which a state could proscribe abortion except to preserve the mothers life or health. The Texas statutes made no distinction between abortions performed early in pregnancy and those performed later, and it limited the legal justification for the procedure to a single reason --saving the mother's life -- so it could not survive the constitutional attack. This conclusion made it unnecessary for the Court to consider the doctor's vagueness challenge.
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| Chambers v. Miss., No. 71-5908,
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, February 21, 1973, Decided
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Overview: Defendant was convicted of murdering a policeman. The state supreme court affirmed the judgment. The Court granted certiorari to consider whether defendant's trial was conducted in accord with principles of due process under the U.S. Const. amend. XIV in light of the trial court's failure to allow defendant to cross-examine a key witness and the exclusion of evidence by application of the state hearsay rule. The Court reversed defendant's conviction. It held that the exclusion, under state hearsay rules, of exculpatory testimony that another party had committed the crime, which under the circumstances was likely to be trustworthy and within the rationale of the exception for declarations against penal interest, coupled with the State's refusal to allow defendant to cross-examine a key witness because of a common-law rule that a party may not impeach his own witness, denied him a trial in accord with fundamental standards of due process.
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| Roe v. Wade,
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES,
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| San Antonio Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Rodriguez, No. 71-1332,
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, March 21, 1973
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Overview: In a suit by plaintiff parents on behalf of school children throughout Texas who were members of minority groups, or who were poor and resided in school districts having a low property tax base, the lower court held that the Texas school finance system was unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The lower court based its decision on the substantial inter-district disparities in school expenditures largely attributable to differences in the amounts of money collected through local property taxation. On appeal, the Supreme Court held that where wealth was involved, the Equal Protection Clause did not require absolute equality or precisely equal advantages. The Court found that the Texas system did not operate to the peculiar disadvantage of any suspect class. The Court rejected the lower court's finding that education was a fundamental right or liberty. The strict scrutiny test was inappropriate and applied a standard of review that required only that the State's system be shown to bear some rational relationship to legitimate State purposes. The Texas plan satisfied the standard, and thus, the Court reversed.
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| McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, No. 72-490,
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, May 14, 1973, Decided
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Overview: The employee filed suit against the employer under ¿ 703(a)(1) of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,, claiming that the employer refused to rehire him as an aircraft mechanic because of his race and his involvement in the civil rights movement. The Supreme Court affirmed the reversal of the dismissal of the ¿ 703(a)(1) claim because an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission finding of reasonable cause was not a jurisdictional prerequisite to the employee's federal action for violation of ¿ 703(a)(1). In remanding the matter for trial, the court instructed the lower court on the order and allocation of proof for the employee's claim. The court found that the employee had presented a prima facie case of racial discrimination under ¿ 703(a)(1) by showing that he was rejected for a job for which the employer knew he was qualified. However, the employer offered a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for the employee's rejection in his participation in unlawful conduct against it. Therefore, the employee was entitled to a fair opportunity at trial to show that the employer used his conduct as a pretext for racial discrimination.
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| Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, No. 71-732,
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, May 29, 1973, Decided
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Overview: Respondent was brought to trial on a charge of possessing a check with intent to defraud. Respondent moved to suppress the introduction of certain material as evidence against him on the ground that the material had been acquired through a warrantless search and seizure that were unconstitutional. The court of appeals vacated an order that denied the petition for habeas corpus relief on grounds that there was insufficient proof that respondent knew that he had a right to refuse to give his consent to the search. The Court disagreed that proof of knowledge of the right to refuse consent was a necessary prerequisite to demonstrating "voluntary" consent. Rather, the Court held that individual consent could only be ascertained by analyzing all of the circumstances. The traditional definition of voluntariness, which the Court adhered to, did not require proof of knowledge of a right to refuse as the sine qua non of an effective consent to a search.
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| Miller v. California, No. 70-73,
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, June 21, 1973, Decided
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Overview: Defendant mailed brochures that contained pictures of sexually explicit activities to individuals who had not requested the material, and the individuals notified the police. After a trial, defendant was convicted of violating Cal. Penal Code ¿ 311.2(a) by knowingly distributing obscene matter. The Court defined the standards that were to be used to identify obscene material that a state might regulate without infringing on the First Amendment, applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court held that the standard to determine whether material was obscene was whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, not national standards, would find that the work appealed to the prurient interest, whether the work depicted sexual conduct defined by state law, and whether the work lacked serious literary, artistic, or scientific value. The Court vacated and remanded the state court's decision.
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| United States v. Robinson, No. 72-936,
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, December 11, 1973, Decided
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Overview: Defendant was pulled over by a police officer. The officer had probable cause to arrest defendant for driving after his license had been revoked. The officer then searched defendant and felt an object under defendant's coat. The officer reached into the coat and pulled out a cigarette package. The officer felt there was something in the package that was not cigarettes. The officer opened the package and found what was later determined to be heroin. The Court reversed the appellate court's decision and found the search permissible under U.S. Const. amend. IV. A search incident to a lawful arrest was clearly authorized. The appellate court's decision was incorrect in that it concluded that even with probable cause for an arrest, an officer was only allowed to conduct a protective frisk for weapons. When an officer had probable cause for an arrest, as the officer in the present case did, a more extensive exploration of the suspect's person was authorized. This was to protect the officer, but also to preserve evidence. The fact that defendant was to be arrested for a driving offense did not lessen the officer's right to search defendant.
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