In Branzburg, the Supreme Court confronted an issue of continuing controversy: May journalists who are called to testify before grand juries protect the identities of their confidential sources?

When a newly appointed Democratic public defender discharged two assistant public defenders because they were Republicans, the discharged lawyers claimed that their First Amendment freedoms of belief and association were violated.

This case originated in the state of Ohio where Clarence Brandenburg, a Ku Klux Klan leader, was convicted, fined. . .

Even though the U.S. Constitution provides strong protections for speech, in a number of early decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court gave government broad authority to prosecute those who engage in speech advocating violence or illegal activity.

An extremely effective lawyer and reformer in the Progressive era before Woodrow Wilson named him to the Supreme Court in 1916, Brandeis had very little if any contact with issues that would be identified as civil liberties.

In Brady, the Supreme Court for the first time squarely recognized that the Fourteenth Amendment due process clause guarantees criminal defendants the right to be given favorable information in the possession of the prosecution or the police.

Bradfield v. Roberts is the first of only two Supreme Court cases that have addressed whether government funding of faith-based human services programs is constitutional.

The central issue in the Boykin case was the responsibility of a criminal court to safeguard the rights of the accused.

An agent of the customs department, referred to as a collector, seized thirty-five cases of plate glass in pursuance of customs law.

The First Amendment right to free speech includes a right to associate for expressive purposes.

When a police officer came to serve an arrest warrant upon Michael Hardwick for a citation that Hardwick had already paid, the officer found Hardwick in his bedroom engaged in consensual oral sex with another man.

Pursuant to federal regulations requiring social security numbers for all dependent children, Pennsylvania authorities had stopped Aid to Dependent Families and Children benefits to Stephen Roy and Karen Miller and were also taking steps to reduce food stamps.

In Bowen v. Kendrick, the Court upheld the Adolescent Family Life Act (AFLA) against an establishment clause challenge.

Important rights and policies can be in tension when a governmental agency seeks to act on a child’s behalf and parental consent has not been obtained.

Troops had been stationed in Boston and other cities in the colonies as a result of growing resistance by the colonists against imperial laws, especially the hated Townshend Acts.

Noted jurist, author, and scholar, Robert Heron Bork was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He received a B.A. from the University of Chicago in 1948 and a J.D. in 1953.

When we think of adjudicating guilt, we think of trials—witnesses questioned, lawyers locked in forensic combat, juries attentive to the subtleties of the case in preparation for their deliberations, and the verdict that will ultimately puncture the tension in the courtroom.

In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury wrote about a world in which the responsibility of fire fighters was to burn books rather than to extinguish fires.

Bond v. Floyd arose from the intersection of the struggle for civil rights and the protest movement against U.S. involvement in Vietnam, two political movements that had a dramatic impact on the United States in the 1960s.

Since the mid-1970s, it has been clear that commercial speech can be protected free speech under the First Amendment. However, it is typically accorded lesser protection than noncommercial speech.

The First Amendment provides that ‘‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’’

Federal law provides that ‘‘[c]orporations organized and operated exclusive for religious, charitable, or educational purposes’’ are entitled to tax-exempt status.

Kiryas Joel involved a striking fact situation: a public school district created to serve only the disabled children of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect.

In Board of Education v. Pico, the sharply divided Court held that the school board violated the students’ First Amendment rights by removing from high school and junior high school libraries several books that the board found ‘‘anti-American, anti- Christian, anti-Semitic, and just plain filthy.’’