Supreme Court Cases

Supreme Court Cases

There are six Supreme Court Cases that you need to be know:

• 1803 - Marbury v. Madison

• 1819 - McCulloch v. Maryland

• 1824 - Gibbons v. Ogden

• 1832 - Worcester v. Georgia

• 1841 - United States v. The Amistad

• 1857 - Dred Scott v. Sandford

Each of these cases deals with a particular legal principle, or sets a new legal precedent, that is critical to our understanding of how the US Constitution was interpreted by the Supreme Court during the early years of the republic. Read through each of the articles below and see if you can summarize the main legal points. Then review the "Founding Documents" Slideshow in the Course Overview section of the website to confirm your findings.

There is an excellent movie (Amistad) that tells the story behind the 1841 case of United States v. The Amistad. I highly recommend that you watch this movie sometime during this school year. It does a good job of telling the facts of the story in an entertaining way. Pay close attention to the role played by John Quincy Adams in this movie. At the time of the Amistad incident, John Quincy Adams was serving in the House of Representatives, after having already served a four-year term as US President. He is the only former US President to serve in the House of Representatives.