... the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures". The constitution specifies that the government must have probable cause and obtain a warrant before it can conduct a search on a citizen. However, the Supreme Court has ruled ... of the Fourth Amendment basically amounts to a 'junior version' of the Fourth Amendment for students in public schools. Instead of probable cause and a warrant-which are typically required for a search-a school only needs reasonable suspicion, a much weaker standard, to search a studen...

• Word Count: 2436
• Approx Pages: 10
• Grade Level: High School

... to give them the opportunity by passing ordinances aimed at preventing distribution of hate materials, parading in military costumes, and then obliging parade organizers to obtain an insurance bond before a permit would be issued. After a series of state and federal lawsuits, the ordinances were overturned and the neo-Nazis were granted a permit to march in the village of Skokie. However, the group decided not to ... Renz, the neo-Nazi group followed legal channels to be granted permission to march. They hired a lawyer, filed injunctions and eventually made it before a judge who decided...

• Word Count: 1305
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography

... smooth. The evidence was more than clear. Simmons even confessed to the murder. Simmons reenacted the crime scene on the bridge on video for the trial. Tessmer testified against him and said that Simmons had a plan before the murder. The jury had a guilty verdict. The jury then recommended the death sentence, even though Simmons had no criminal record ... court system. The courts continued to uphold the death sentence. Simmons was extremely lucky. Since this case was right after Atkins v. Virginia case in 2002, which overturned the death penalty for the mentally ill. Simmons filed a new...

• Word Count: 1380
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... Ohio for the right to have his name listed as the surviving spouse on his male partner's death certificate. The plaintiffs won in October 2013 after District Judge Timothy Black ruled that, "when a state effectively terminates the marriage of a same-sex couple married in another jurisdiction, it intrudes into the ... become a footnote in the annals of American history (Oyez)." This progressive culture argument would eventually become a majority opinion in the Supreme Court. After judgment was passed at the state level regarding the six lawsuits, it made it to the United States Court of A...

• Word Count: 1936
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... , depends on the outcome of voting restoration to that citizen. Thirteen states and Washington D.C. are the only states that allow felons to have voting rights restored to them after they have completed their term of incarceration. Maine and Vermont are the only states that allow a felon to have voting rights ... of citizenship. The Naturalization Act of 1795 states that an immigrant had to reside in the United States continuously for at least five years before becoming a citizen. The Alien Sedition Act of 1798 extended the Naturalization Act to fourteen years. In the case of Trop v. Dull...

• Word Count: 1439
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography

... , Captain George Kendall was hanged for the capital offense of treason. Among other serious capital crimes in colonial times were murder, rape, heresy - and witchcraft," (DeathPenalty.Procon). After the establishing of the death penalty, it spread all over America and developed many different ways of receiving the death penalty. There are 5 different types of receiving the death penalty which are lethal injection, electrocution ... defendant. Are defendants insane or is it good acting? Were they really insane before or just insane while in trial? Trials such as Frank Spisak's, who was ex...

• Word Count: 1695
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... should not play a role in that assessment. African Americans have suffered discrimination initially through the system of slavery, and then through a pattern of exclusion, in the legislation and court decisions. Even after slavery ended in 1865, race discrimination still occurred in the justice system. Following the Civil War, amendments to the Bill of Rights granted all persons, regardless of race, a right to ... just based on the merits of the law, but also their conscience and their sense of justice. As mentioned before, men and women behave differently. In order eliminate bias and ...

• Word Count: 1906
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." The Founding Fathers of the constitution knew all too well how the king's soldiers and marshals had abused their power through sweeping searches of American homes before 1776 thus resulting in the creation of the Fourth ... v. United States. Federal law enforcement authorities accused the defendant, Freemont Weeks of using the mail for illegal purposes. After his arrest, the home in which Weeks was staying was searched without a valid search warrant. Evidence in the form of letters wer...

• Word Count: 1443
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... passed away, Luther even received a day to honor what he did for the nation. After he passed away, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference helped for Congress to come up with the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act. It consisted of having a judge, before wiretapping, to verify that any special case being investigated like this, met the requirements in order to conduct the surveillance ... . This Act worked really well for a few decades, but then shocking news published by the New York Times, disrespected every American's freedom. After the attacks on 9/11, ... for surveillanc...

• Word Count: 1471
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... State had a right to restrict abortion according to the principles already in place."(U.S. Abortion Laws: An Overview of the History and Legality of Abortion in the United States). Ironically both the decision from Roe v. Wade and the decision from Doe v. Bolton were appealed and presented before the Supreme Court, with both verdicts being handed down on the same day - January 22, 1973. Roe ruled ... quality of life should be present. If a child is unborn but it is predictable that she or he will be poor, unsupervised, and unwanted, there is a serious question about whether or not it is...

• Word Count: 2395
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... Comstock Act of 1874 as the law standard, which defined obscenity. The act was named after a crusader of obscenity by the name of Anthony Comstock. The act defined work was obscene if "it has a tendency to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences and whose hands it might fall"1. The Comstock Act was barrowed from a British definition called ... because if affronts contemporary community standards relating to the description or representation of sexual matters. Third, before something can be found to be obscene, it must be utterly without redeeming social...

• Word Count: 2436
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... civil rights, however, contrary to popular belief, it was not. The truth of the matter is that the black communities of Montgomery were tired of segregation, cruelty, and the many acts of violence toward them. Before the boycott, "[a]lmost daily some black man, women, or child had had an unpleasant experience on the bus" [20]. Blacks were beaten, thrown in jail, humiliated ... bus drivers would deliberately pass black riders rather than have them on the same bus with "clean" white people. After a while some blacks who would normally ride the bus decided to walk, boycott or no boycott. T...

• Word Count: 1946
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: High School

... v. Des Moines ISD, three high school students wished to protest the Vietnam War by wearing black armbands to school. After refusing to remove the armbands, the three students were suspended by a school official. Consequently, the students and their parents brought legal action against the school authorities. Eventually, the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. ... by the Constitution. In Santa Fe ISD v. Doe, a student would deliver a prayer over the school's public address system prior to every varsity home football game. Mormon and Catholic families who objected to this filed a l...

• Word Count: 1639
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... year-old daughter, Linda Carol, for a walk to the Sumner Elementary School located just seven blocks from her house in Topeka, Kansas. After a discussion Brown had with the principal over the enrollment of his daughter, he was informed that she would not be admitted to the school ... Education (Brown). Although the decision was against the plaintiffs, Huxman attached a "Finding of Fact" to the judgment, it read: "Segregation of white and colored people in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn" (...

• Word Count: 1528
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

... of black suffrage, the Radical Republican Congress, which had swept away the Southern regimes organized under presidential Reconstruction, required Ex-Confederate States to adopt new state constitutions allowing black suffrage before senators and representatives from those states would be readmitted to Congress. The United States was thus faced with a situation in which all the Ex-Confederate States granted blacks the right to ... Supreme Court's decision led to a new set of anti-black laws throughout the South. These laws were called "Jim Crow- laws after the title of a minstrel song p...

• Word Count: 1388
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... 's use of "contemporary community standards- to judge Web material made it "substantially overbroad."" John Ashcroft, the Attorney General of the U.S. appealed this ruling. The U.S Supreme Court accepted this appeal and vacated the Court of Appeal's decision. In determining whether COPA violated the First Amendment, Justice Thomas recognized that "obscene speech has long been held to fall outside the purview of ... constitutionality of COPA. In analyzing the majority opinion, I think that it is a stretch to use Hamling and Sable in the context of the Internet. It seems to me that the just...

• Word Count: 2266
• Approx Pages: 9
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... 's use of "contemporary community standards- to judge Web material made it "substantially overbroad."" John Ashcroft, the Attorney General of the U.S. appealed this ruling. The U.S Supreme Court accepted this appeal and vacated the Court of Appeal's decision. In determining whether COPA violated the First Amendment, Justice Thomas recognized that "obscene speech has long been held to fall outside the purview of ... constitutionality of COPA. In analyzing the majority opinion, I think that it is a stretch to use Hamling and Sable in the context of the Internet. It seems to me that the just...

• Word Count: 2266
• Approx Pages: 9
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... violent or serious felony then they are sentenced to life in prison. They are given the possibility of parole only after they serve the minimum time required of their conviction. If a person gets sentenced to 25 years to life imprisonment, they must serve 25 years ... charges, 4 to be exact. Under the three-strikes law, Ewing was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. Having to serve 25 years before he is eligible for parole (Kirkland, 1). The main idea that the three-strikes law tries to get across is to get repeat offenders off the streets ... a good portion of these cases again. E...

• Word Count: 1504
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... as a sign of its personhood. In Keeler v. The Superior Court of Amador County, Justice Burke quotes a scholar saying, ""The common law itself prohibited abortion after quickening (movement in the womb) and hanging a pregnant felon after quickening, because the life of a second human being would thereby be taken."" [15] Even in the early 19th century, England penalized abortions by putting those guilty ... to death. [15] Connecticut became the first State to recognize abortion as a crime in 1821. [12] Forty years later, Connecticut decided that abortion before quickening was also a ... c...

• Word Count: 1624
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... a forever modernizing criminal justice system. In the past few years alone we have encountered several horrific acts of violence which challenged our freedoms and put our courts to the test. It is those extreme cases that make people question certain rights, such as the right to defense ... to historical practices. This was one of the most significant cases which raised the issue of selection and rejection of defense council. Most defendants who choose to represent themselves do so after a frustrating experience with an attorney assigned to their case. The case of State v. Spencer raised...

• Word Count: 1618
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography

... evidence from a suspect legally, it is required that a judge must grant a search warrant. (Encarta Online) The warrant authorizes the officer to seize particularly described items and to bring them before the court that issued the warrant. In common law, search warrants were used mainly to discover stolen property. In modern law, they have a variety of items, including intoxicating liquors, gambling ... 's home thinking that will find evidence of illegal gambling. While searching the house they found no evidence of gambling, but did find dirty magazines. Mapp was arrested and charged wi...

• Word Count: 1323
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

... Kyllos home and in comparison to the rest of his neighbors" (United States pg.2). Using the information federal agent Elliot obtained in the scan, he was issued a warrant to search Kyllos home. Kyllos home was searched, and over 100 marijuana plants were being cultivated. After being arrested, ... Kyllo tried to repress the evidence seized during the search. He failed, and pleads guilty to all charges that were brought against him. The Ninth Circuit ... of privacy because the imager did not expose private details of Kyllos life" (United States pg. 2). Kyllo appeals, and the case goes be...

• Word Count: 1483
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... the right to vote to citizens who have been convicted of serious crimes or who are not able to make rational decisions. States cannot require citizens to pass a reading and writing test before granting the right to vote. However, with these provisions aside, the states can place any other restrictions they please on voters. "One of the earliest acts of suffrage restriction ... threat to their financial security was to push for the enfranchisement of African Americans. This freedom eventually came in 1870 when the 15th Amendment was added to the Constitution just after the Civil War. It ...

• Word Count: 2017
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: High School

... mandatory to be said by an officer arresting a perpetrator because of one man, Ernesto Miranda. Ernest Miranda who the Miranda rights was named after was a convicted rapist who lived in Arizona. In 1963 Ernesto Miranda was arrested for kidnapping, and rape of a young woman. The victim identified Ernesto Miranda at a police headquarters. The police interrogated Mr. Miranda for about two hours until ... Miranda rights because the requirement to read them to suspects is the result of the Supreme Court's decision in "Miranda V. Arizona." He was later retried and convicted based on other evi...

• Word Count: 1327
• Approx Pages: 5

... Amnesty International, about 100 nations either have formally abolished capital punishment or have done so in effect. These countries include most European and Latin American nations. About 90 countries still permit capital punishment, including most developing nations. More than three countries a year on ... was looked upon as one of the most significant acts to ever question capital punishment. This decision was made just two days before Ryan's term as governor of Illinois was up, sparking much controversy. Although much of the media has been split upon taking ... and convictions. It...

• Word Count: 1346
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate