Landmark Supreme Court Cases to Know for American Government
The landmark Supreme Court cases an American Government course expects you to know, grouped by topic, with each holding and which rulings were later overturned.
Every American Government course has a long list of Supreme Court cases to know. To keep them straight, group them by the right or power at stake, learn each in both directions, and track which ones later rulings overturned or limited.
This is the list from unit 6 of Encodr's American Government course, which sorts the cases named in OpenStax American Government 4e into eight chapters, with holdings checked against the Court opinions and Oyez. Each entry gives the year and holding only: what the Court decided, not whether it decided well.
Federal power and judicial review
| Case | Holding |
|---|---|
| Marbury v. Madison (1803) | Established judicial review, striking a provision of the Judiciary Act of 1789. |
| McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) | Congress could charter a national bank under its implied powers (the Necessary and Proper Clause), and a state could not tax it. |
| Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) | Read the commerce power broadly: a federal steamboat license overrode a New York monopoly. |
| Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952) | Struck down a Korean War seizure of steel mills made without an act of Congress. |
| United States v. Lopez (1995) | The Gun-Free School Zones Act exceeded Congress's commerce power, the first such limit in decades. |
| NFIB v. Sebelius (2012) | Upheld the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate under the taxing power. |
The commerce cases in order: Gibbons, United States v. E. C. Knight Co., Wickard v. Filburn, Lopez.
Religion
| Case | Holding |
|---|---|
| Engel v. Vitale (1962) | Official, school-sponsored prayer in public schools violates the Establishment Clause. |
| Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971) | Created an Establishment Clause test; Kennedy v. Bremerton (2022) said it had long since been abandoned. |
| Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972) | Protected Amish parents who would not send their children to school past a certain age. |
| Employment Division v. Smith (1990) | Neutral, generally applicable laws can burden religion without meeting the Sherbert test. Congress responded with RFRA (1993). |
| Santa Fe ISD v. Doe (2000) | Student-led prayer over the loudspeaker at football games, facilitated by the school, was unconstitutional. |
| Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014) | Some closely held for-profit corporations could be exempted from the contraceptive mandate on religious grounds. |
| Town of Greece v. Galloway (2014) | Upheld ceremonial prayer before town-council meetings. |
Also know Sherbert v. Verner (a state could not deny benefits to a worker who would not work on her Sabbath) and City of Boerne v. Flores (RFRA binds only the federal government).
Speech, press and assembly
| Case | Holding |
|---|---|
| Schenck v. United States (1919) | Produced the "clear and present danger" approach. |
| Near v. Minnesota (1931) | Government generally may not block publication in advance (prior restraint). |
| New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964) | A public official suing for libel must show actual malice. |
| Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) | Replaced Schenck's test: advocacy can be punished only if it is directed to imminent lawless action and likely to produce it. |
| New York Times Co. v. United States (1971) | The Pentagon Papers case; the government could not stop publication. |
| Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier (1988) | Schools may limit a school-sponsored newspaper for legitimate teaching reasons. Tinker (1969) protects other student speech unless it substantially disrupts school. |
| Texas v. Johnson (1989) | Burning a U.S. flag in political protest is protected symbolic speech. |
| Virginia v. Black (2003) | A state may ban cross burning carried out to threaten or intimidate. |
Miller v. California defines obscenity narrowly: it must lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.
Rights of the accused
| Case | Holding |
|---|---|
| Weeks v. United States (1914) | Created the exclusionary rule for federal prosecutions. |
| Mapp v. Ohio (1961) | Applied the exclusionary rule to state trials. |
| Miranda v. Arizona (1966) | Police must warn suspects of the right to remain silent before custodial questioning. |
| Atkins v. Virginia (2002) | Barred executing people with intellectual disabilities. |
| Roper v. Simmons (2005) | Barred executing anyone under 18 at the time of the crime. |
| Carpenter v. United States (2018) | Police generally need a warrant for cell-tower location history. |
Also: Gideon v. Wainwright (states must provide lawyers to poor defendants facing serious charges), Kelo v. City of New London (eminent domain for private economic development) and Batson v. Kentucky (no race-based jury strikes).
Privacy and incorporation
| Case | Holding |
|---|---|
| Barron v. Baltimore (1833) | The Bill of Rights limits only the national government, the baseline that incorporation later changed. |
| Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) | First clearly recognized a constitutional right to privacy. |
| Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) | Replaced Roe v. Wade's (1973) trimester framework with the undue burden test. |
| Lawrence v. Texas (2003) | Struck down laws criminalizing private consensual sex between adults, overturning Bowers v. Hardwick (1986). |
| District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) | Recognized an individual Second Amendment right (federal territory). |
| McDonald v. Chicago (2010) | Applied the Second Amendment to the states. |
| Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022) | Overruled Roe and Casey: the Constitution confers no right to abortion, and the issue returns to the states. |
The incorporation milestones, in order: Barron, Near, Mapp, Gideon, McDonald.
Race and equal protection
| Case | Holding |
|---|---|
| Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) | Congress could not ban slavery in the territories; effectively overturned by the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. |
| Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) | Upheld "separate but equal." |
| Korematsu v. United States (1944) | Upheld Japanese American internment; Trump v. Hawaii (2018) called it gravely wrong the day it was decided. |
| Shelley v. Kraemer (1948) | Courts cannot enforce racial housing covenants. |
| Brown v. Board of Education (1954) | Separate public schools are inherently unequal, overturning Plessy for public education. |
| Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States (1964) | Congress could ban segregation in private businesses via the commerce power. |
| Loving v. Virginia (1967) | Struck down Virginia's ban on interracial marriage. |
| Shelby County v. Holder (2013) | Struck down the Voting Rights Act's preclearance coverage formula. |
| Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023) | Race-conscious admissions violate equal protection; Bakke (1978) and Grutter (2003) no longer describe practice. |
Gender and other groups
| Case | Holding |
|---|---|
| Elk v. Wilkins (1884) | The Fourteenth Amendment's citizenship clause did not cover Native Americans. |
| Lau v. Nichols (1974) | Sided with Chinese American students given no English-language help. |
| Craig v. Boren (1976) | First applied intermediate scrutiny to sex-based laws. |
| United States v. Windsor (2013) | Struck DOMA's denial of federal benefits to married same-sex couples. |
| Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) | Made same-sex marriage a constitutional right nationwide. |
| Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) | Title VII bars employers from firing workers for sexual orientation. |
| McGirt v. Oklahoma (2020) | Much of eastern Oklahoma remains Muscogee (Creek) reservation land. |
Elections and campaign finance
| Case | Holding |
|---|---|
| Reynolds v. Sims (1964) | One person, one vote: districts need roughly equal populations. |
| Buckley v. Valeo (1976) | Upheld contribution limits; struck limits on candidates' own spending as limits on speech. |
| U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton (1995) | States cannot impose term limits on members of Congress. |
| Bush v. Gore (2000) | Stopped the Florida ballot recount. |
| Crawford v. Marion County Election Board (2008) | Upheld Indiana's voter-ID law. |
| Citizens United v. FEC (2010) | Corporations may spend independently on political speech, opening the way to super PACs. |
How to actually remember these
About sixty cases is too many to cram. Three habits help:
- Make two cards per case. "Which case established judicial review?" and "What did Marbury establish?" are separate memories, and the testing effect strengthens the direction you practice.
- Learn the chains. Plessy to Brown, Schenck to Brandenburg, Weeks to Mapp, Bowers to Lawrence, Roe and Casey to Dobbs, Bakke and Grutter to SFFA. Exams ask which later case changed an earlier one; the course cards flag each.
- Mix the groups once you know them. Shuffling religion, speech and equal protection cases together forces you to tell them apart, which is the point of interleaving.
How to study for American Government covers the rest of the course, and what's in American Government maps all 17 units. Several cases also turn up in sociology: Plessy and Brown in the race and education units, Obergefell under family, Reynolds and Shelby County under politics (see what's in Intro Sociology). That course even teaches the Clarks' doll studies the Court cited in Brown; how to study for Intro Sociology covers it. For other courses in the series, see the free college gen-ed course flashcards.
Encodr turns this into a habit: study anything in a feed, and it schedules the rest.
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