The Court Room
This is the person in a courtroom who listens to all the evidence and makes sure the trial follows the rules of the law.
Judge
This type of case involves the government charging a person with breaking a law, such as robbery or assault
Criminal
This 1954 Supreme Court case ruled that racially segregated schools were unconstitutional, overturning nearly 60 years of precedent.
What is Brown v. Board of Education?
This is the legal term for when a past court decision becomes a rule that future courts are expected to follow.
What is legal precedent?
This judicial philosophy holds that judges should interpret the Constitution as it is literally written and leave policy decisions to the legislature.
What is judicial restraint?
This is the group of everyday citizens chosen to listen to a case and decide if someone is guilty or not guilty
Jury
This type of case involves a disagreement between two private people or businesses, often over money or property.
Civil
This 1896 Supreme Court case established the "separate but equal" doctrine, allowing racial segregation to continue for decades.
What is Plessy v. Ferguson?
This is the document a losing party files to ask the Supreme Court to review their case, with the Court receiving thousands of these each year but accepting only a small fraction.
What is a writ of certiorari?
This judicial philosophy holds that judges should interpret the Constitution broadly, using its underlying principles to address issues the Founders could not have anticipated.
What is judicial activism?
This is the name for the final decision a jury makes at the end of a trial — either guilty or not guilty.
Verdict
This is the court system that handles cases involving state laws, like a burglary committed entirely within Wisconsin.
State Court
This is the name of the legal principle established in Marbury v. Madison that gives courts the power to strike down laws that violate the Constitution.
What is judicial review?
This is what it is called when a jury cannot reach a unanimous decision after deliberating, leaving the judge with no choice but to declare the trial unresolved.
What is a hung jury?
In the DNA privacy case, Judge Welch ruled that questions about how long DNA should be stored belong to lawmakers, not courts. Judge Osei ruled that the spirit of the Fourth Amendment protects genetic information as deeply personal. This is the judicial philosophy each judge was demonstrating, in order.
What are judicial restraint (Welch) and judicial activism (Osei)?
This is the type of trial where a defendant gives up their right to a jury and lets the judge alone decide the outcome.
Bench Trial
This is the legal term for a court's authority to hear and decide a particular case based on what the case involves and where it happened.
Jurisdiction
In Marbury v. Madison, William Marbury asked the Supreme Court to issue this type of court order to force James Madison to deliver his judicial commission.
What is a writ of mandamus?
This is the court order that compels a government official or agency to carry out a legal duty they are required to perform but have been refusing or neglecting to do.
What is a writ of mandamus?
This is the burden of proof the government must meet in every criminal case in the United States, and it is the standard the three holdout jurors in Diane Forsythe's murder trial said the prosecution had failed to reach.
What is beyond a reasonable doubt?
This is the process that occurs before a trial begins in which attorneys question a panel of potential jurors to identify bias, and it comes from a French phrase meaning "to speak the truth."
Voir Dire
A technology company based in California is being sued by a manufacturing company in Illinois for $4 million over a broken contract. Neither company is based in the same state. This is the court system that would have jurisdiction over this dispute and the specific legal basis that gives it authority.
Federal Court, Diversity jurisdiction
Chief Justice Marshall faced this central contradiction in Marbury v. Madison — he agreed Marbury deserved his commission, yet he ruled against him. This is what Marshall ultimately used the case to establish, and why ruling against his own Court's power was considered a masterstroke of judicial strategy.
judicial review — Marshall sacrificed a small political victory to permanently establish the Supreme Court's authority to declare laws unconstitutional, giving the judiciary lasting power over the other branches
In 2022, a environmental advocacy group filed suit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin after the Environmental Protection Agency — a federal agency legally required under the Clean Water Act to respond to formal pollution complaints within 180 days — failed to act on 847 documented complaints filed by residents of communities along the Menomonee River. The complaints detailed industrial runoff from a chemical manufacturing plant that had been discharging waste into the river for over four years, contaminating drinking water sources and causing measurable increases in respiratory illness among children in three neighboring school districts. The EPA acknowledged receiving the complaints but stated internally that the agency was "resource constrained" and had chosen to prioritize complaints in larger metropolitan areas. Meanwhile the chemical company continued operating without restriction, the contamination levels rose, and the affected communities — predominantly low-income and largely Hispanic — had no other regulatory body with authority to compel the company to stop.
Why is a federal district court the correct venue?
a federal district court is the correct venue because the case involves a federal agency, a federal statute (the Clean Water Act), and a constitutional question about whether a federal agency can selectively ignore its legally mandated obligations
In 1944, the Supreme Court ruled in Korematsu v. United States that the forced relocation of Japanese American citizens into internment camps during World War II was constitutional, citing national security as justification. The Court deferred heavily to the judgment of the executive branch and the military, declining to second-guess wartime decisions. In 2018, the Supreme Court formally declared Korematsu to have been gravely wrong the day it was decided. Today, the United States government uses artificial intelligence algorithms to flag individuals for additional screening at airports and border crossings. Civil liberties groups argue the algorithms produce results that disproportionately target people based on national origin and religion, violating the First and Fifth Amendments. The government argues the algorithm is a neutral national security tool and that courts should defer to executive branch judgment on matters of national security — the same argument made in 1944.
Identify the judicial philosophy the government is asking the courts to apply
What is judicial restraint