In this decision, the Supreme Court upheld a state conviction following federal acquittal for the same crime, ruling that the so-called ‘‘double jeopardy clause’’ of the Fifth Amendment, which bars multiple convictions for the same crime, did not apply to the states.

Barron v. Baltimore was an appeal to the Supreme Court from the Court of Appeals of Maryland, upon a writ of error through Section 25 of the Judiciary Act of 1789, on the grounds that a state action had violated the U.S. Constitution.

Nude dancing as an issue in earlier cases occurred in the context of alcohol regulations, such as California v. LaRue (1972), or zoning laws as in Schad v. Mt. Ephraim (1981).

In 1954, Lloyd Barenblatt was subpoenaed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), which was investigating communist activities and organizations.

Many capital punishment statutes permit jurors to consider evidence of a convicted capital murderer’s ‘‘future dangerousness.’’

Barclay was convicted of first-degree murder for his participation in the politically and racially motivated murder of a hitchhiker.

From the time in the early 1600s that some of the early Puritans came to believe that infant baptism could not be justified on biblical grounds, to the final abolition of the last remaining compulsory religious taxation system in Massachusetts in 1833, the Baptists bore the brunt of the religious persecution and discrimination meted out in early American communities. 

MauriceM, after being hospitalized at age threemonths with fresh and partially healed bone fractures, was placed into shelter care by a court order but was later returned to his mother Jacqueline’s custody.

Method by which the people of various states exercise their retained right to initiate and adopt legislation directly.

The manager of an adult theater was charged in a state court with distributing obscene materials, a misdemeanor. Pursuant to state law, and over his claim that the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial required a jury of at least six members, he was tried and convicted by a jury of five people.

Roger Baldwin was the founder of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and served as its director from 1920 to 1950. He was widely recognized as the foremost advocate of civil liberties in the United States during those years.

The Baldus Study, conducted by Professors David Baldus, George Woodworth, and Charles Pulaski, was a sophisticated empirical analysis of 2,484 Georgia homicide cases that were charged and sentenced in the 1970s.

In constitutional adjudication, the balancing test is the predominant mode of case resolution, although major differences exist on ‘‘how to strike the balance.’’ The balance that must be struck is between individual freedoms and societal needs such as the need to preserve order.

‘‘Balancing’’ refers to a method of adjudication used by judges to reach decisions through weighing the parties’ competing interests or rights.

In 1791, the Eighth Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution as part of the Bill of Rights for the purpose of prohibiting, among other things, the requirement of ‘‘excessive bail.’’

Emerging by the early nineteenth century, the bad tendency test remained the predominant judicial approach to determining the scope of free expression for over a century.

Born the grandson of Benjamin Franklin and educated in Geneva, Benjamin Franklin Bache epitomized early America’s ambivalent relationship with the press.

As government has grown in the United States, conflicts between religious observers and the law have increased proportionately. Modern dilemmas are easy to find. Members of the Native American church seek to use peyote despite laws prohibiting its possession.

The Fourth Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment regulates government actors and provides, in part, the ‘‘right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.’’

Although the first two clauses of the First Amendment concern the establishment and free exercise of ‘‘religion,’’ the amendment long has been understood to protect the liberty and equality of nonbelievers.

The United States provides several forms of relief to refugees, or individuals fleeing persecution in their home country. The legal framework governing refugees derives principally from international law and has been implemented in statutes and regulations.

It was not until the last decade of the twentieth century that the U.S. Supreme Court decided three cases in which the Court began what remains a tentative exploration of whether (if at all) the U.S. Constitution guarantees a choice concerning the time and manner of one’s death.

John Ashcroft served as attorney general during the first term of the administration of George W. Bush, and in his last year in office analysts were terming him the worst attorney general in the nation’s history.

Congress passed the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 that, among other things, dealt with ‘‘virtual’’ pornographic images of minors.