Review: May It Please the Court

May It Please the Court by Peter Irons
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Great history here, with transcripts (including narrator) of abridged court proceedings backed up by audio cassettes.

It forces me to consider my opinion and how it aligns or not with the court decisions (I found I agree much more with this august body than I would have guessed):

Cases included:

Gideon v. Wainwright(right to counsel)
I AGREE that states are required under the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to provide counsel in criminal cases to represent defendants who are unable to afford to pay their own attorneys.

Abington School District v. Schempp (school prayer)
I AGREE that school-sponsored Bible reading in public schools in the United States to be unconstitutional.

Miranda v. Arizona (“the right to remain silent”)
I AGREE that arrested people should be "mirandized" and am glad the fiend miranda didn't avoid decades of sentence due to this case.

Roe v. Wade (abortion rights)
I AGREE with a women's right to choose and feel comfortable with the trimester-based direction of the court. I also always felt this was more on an enlarged idea of constitutional protection of "privacy" but see it is more on the fact that the born mother is the whose liberty is protected by the constitution.

Edwards v. Aguillard (teaching “creationism”)
I AGREE that the Louisiana law requiring that where evolutionary science was taught in public schools, creation science must also be taught, violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because the law was specifically intended to advance a particular religion.

Regents v. Bakke (reverse discrimination)
Difficult. I DISAGREE that "affirmative action" that race should be one of several factors in college admission policy-where federal funds are accepted. I AGREE that specific racial quotas, such as the 16 out of 100 seats set aside for minority students by the University of California, Davis School of Medicine, are impermissible.

Wisconsin v. Yoder (compulsory schooling for the Amish)
I DISAGREE that Amish children could not be placed under compulsory education past 8th grade. Compulsory education for individual and societal good should not, IMHO, be second to denomination.

Tinker v. Des Moines (Vietnam protest in schools)
I AGREE that the First Amendment applies to public schools, and that administrators should have to demonstrate constitutionally valid reasons for any specific regulation of speech in the classroom.

Texas v. Johnson (flag burning)
I AGREE with invalidating state prohibitions on desecrating the American flag, thought I think protestors taking such a route are being more provocative than articulate.

New York Times v. United States (Pentagon Papers)
I AGREE that the First Amendment did protect the right of The New York Times to print the Pentagon Papers materials. (However, I do think later WikiLeaks and other episodes of vomiting volumes of data out to the world went too far. Have any of those made it to the Supreme Court?)

Cox v. Louisiana (civil rights demonstrations)
I AGREE that a state government cannot employ "breach of the peace" statutes against protesters engaging in peaceable demonstrations that may potentially incite violence.

Communist Party v. Subversive Activities Control Board (freedom of association)
I AGREE with the Supreme Court's first decision against the Board, though it was a dodge of the issues. I DISAGREE with the Supreme Court's second decision that upheld the constitutionality of the Act's registration requirements.

Terry v. Ohio (“stop and frisk” by police)
Especially difficult these days of so many reports of police abuse, but I AGREE that the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures is not violated when a police officer stops a suspect on the street and frisks him or her without probable cause to arrest, if the police officer has a reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime and has a reasonable belief that the person "may be armed and presently dangerous."

Gregg v. Georgia (capital punishment)
I DISAGREE with the use of the death penalty in the United States. I don’t think we need it. This is a difficult one as I feel we have such a free society, dangerous individuals have greater opportunity to use that free climate to become predators.

Cooper v. Aaron (Little Rock school desegregation)
I AGREE that the states are bound by the Court's decisions and must enforce them even if the states disagreed with them. (This was the issue not desegregation itself.)

Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States (public accommodations)
I AGREE that public accommodations must be desegregated.

Palmer v. Thompson (swimming pool integration)
I AGREE that a municipality may close their pools if they are not grown up enough to administer them as integrated facilities.

Loving v. Virginia (interracial marriage)
I AGREE marriage should be race-blind. (Great case name, BTW)

San Antonio v. Rodriguez (equal funding for public schools)
I DISAGREE that the constitution does not compel states to offer equally funded public education institutions to its citizens.

Bowers v. Hardwick (homosexual rights)
I DISAGREE that consensual sex acts between adults can be illegal.

Baker v. Carr (“one person, one vote”)
I AGREE that redistricting (attempts to change the way voting districts are delineated) issues present justiciable questions, thus enabling federal courts to intervene in and to decide redistricting cases.

United States v. Nixon (Watergate tapes)
I AGREE with the unanimous 8–0 ruling against President Richard Nixon, ordering him to deliver presidential tape recordings and other subpoenaed materials to the District Court.

DeShaney v. Winnebago County (child abuse)
This was an ugly and difficult case. I DISAGREE that, in this case, this state government agency's failure to prevent child abuse by a custodial parent did not violate the child's right to liberty.

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