Potter V. US Court Case Study

United States v. Jones is one of many cases that the Supreme Court has ruled on. The case was one of the few cases that has a unanimous ruling. Evening though there was a unanimous rule there was still a debate on reasoning behind the ruling. The debate is between privacy given to a person’s property and a person’s expectation of privacy. United States v. Jones deals with a global positioning device attached to Jones’ car by officers without a warrant. The Supreme Court ruled that the attachment of the global positioning device was a violation of the fourth amendment. Justice Scalia gave the plurality opinion and their reasoning was that the intrusion on the car made it a violation of the fourth amendment.

On April 20, the District of Columbia Court of Appeal decided in the case “S. Brooke Purll Inc. v. Vailes” to reverse a trial court judgment and to remand it for further proceedings. The case was a dispute between a contractor - S. Brooke Purll, Inc.- and a house’s owner Patrick Darrell Vailes -. The latter sued in the Small Claims and Conciliation Branch for the return of a $5000 payment as an initial payment for the contract while the latter counterclaimed $36.102.04 for liquidated damages. The judge found that the owner failed to perform a demolition and to pay $ 7,031.71. It also determined that the liquidated damages clause was a penalty and, therefore, was not enforceable. It also found that the lost profits damages were not proven and

After the end of the Civil War, the state of Georgia believed they deserved 35 million acres of land, so they claimed those 35 million acres of land from the Yazoo river which belong to the Native Americans. So basically, the land was kind of stolen. In the year 1795, the state legislator for Georgia sold those 35 million acre of state land to 4 private land companies for the price of 1.5 cent per acre. In 1796, a new legislator for Georgia found out that the previous legislators of Georgia who voted to sell parcels of the 35 million acres of land were stockholders in the companies that sold the land. The legislator also discovered that they were bribed in helping to re-sell the land for a higher amount while committing fraud and corruption.

Facts: John Angus Smith attempted to trade a Mac 10 machine gun for 2 ounces of cocaine. Smith was then arrested for possession of cocaine and a fully automatic weapon. Federal law requires a mandatory minimum prison sentence for 30 years if a machine gun is "used" in the commission of a drug offense, and because these two things were used in conjunction, Smith was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

The McCullough Vs. Maryland case’s significance was that it was the first to question the power of the federal government. It began when the war of 1812 had ended and the U.S. had acquired a lot of debt. Congress founded the 2nd bank of the United States of America to help pull the country out of debt. At first, the people were happy with Congress’ decision because the bank was a great success, but as the states sensed a financial crisis, known as the Financial Crisis of 1819, they began to dislike the bank. The states were angered by the fact that they had less power than the federal government and decided to rebel and fight back.

The defendants wanted to apply reasonable principles in search of specific performance of the contract. The disposition of the immediate motion for partial summary judgment and objection was controlled. “The court found that although the doctrine of mutuality of remedies may be alive and well in Virginia in actions at law for damages, that was not the case where, regardless of a lack of support of remedy at the time the contract was created, complete performance may, if revealed, afford a party specific performance of the contract for the sale of land.”

Throughout the United States history, there have been many decisions that could have both made and broken the establishment as we know it. One such case that hinges on that statement would be that of the United States V. Jones. The Government is your friend, if you haven’t done anything wrong then you have nothing to hide. Respondent Jones committed a crime that is a known fact. The police had a warrant and they acted on that warrant, although it had expired which was there own fault, they attached a GPS onto his wife’s car because he was smart when using his own car and his own cell phone. Talking in code and only driving from his house to work in his personal car.

The Supreme Court has applied the third-party ruling to telephone information in its 1979 decision in Smith v. Maryland. In that case, law enforcement agents suspected Smith of robbing a woman and making threatening phone calls to her. The telephone company cooperated with agents to install a “pen register,” a device that recorded the phone numbers dialed, but not the content of conversations. The pen register data led to Smith’s arrest and conviction. The defendant argued that the pen data had been collected without a warrant. The Fourth Amendment does not require the government to seek a warrant before obtaining call metadata. The reasoning behind the Smith case has led to the government’s ability to obtain bulk collection of telephony

dealings with members of the Seattle police to secure the release of any of the

In the case of Nichols vs United States, Nichols is a convicted sex offender. Federal law states, “A sex offender shall, not later than 3 business days after each change of name, residence, employment, or student status, appear in person at least 1 jurisdiction involved pursuant to subsection (a) and inform that jurisdiction of all changes in the information required for that offender in the sex offender registry.”

The Supreme Court case of Buck v. Bell in 1997 is a lawsuit in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a Virginia law that offered the eugenic sterilization for individuals regarded genetically unfit. The Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Virginia’s statute regarding sterilization provided the basis for enactment of similar laws across the United States and subsequent sterilization of 65,000 Americans without their approval or that of their family members. Notably, the ruling of this case was based on the concept of feeblemindedness, which is no longer applicable in medical terminology. Actually, this case primarily involved state-enforced eugenic sterilization for individuals considered feebleminded or genetically substandard in certain ways. The case provides considerable insights concerning eugenics and enforced sterilization in the United States and significant concerns on whether genetics should be used for any king of legal decision.

In the case of US v Windsor, Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer were married in Toronto, Canada in 2007, where a same-sex marriage were legal and was recognized by New York state law. When in 2009, Thea died. Spyer left her estate to her spouse, and because their marriage was not recognized by federal law. The government imposed a tax of $363,000. If their marriage was recognized, the estate would have qualified for a marital exemption, and no taxes would have been imposed. On November 9, 2010 Windsor filed suit in district court seeking a declaration that the Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional. The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), enacted in 1996, states that, for the purposes of federal law, the words “marriage” and “spouse” refer to legal

Legislation passed under former Chief Justice John Marshall would continue the Federalists agenda to define a strong central government while diminishing state level powers. Arguably the most important Supreme Court case in history, Marbury v. Madison’s (1803) presided over the commissions of several judges appointed in the final hours of the Adams administration. Chief Justice Marshall would deny the petition and writ, claiming the court did not have the power to issue them however; he awarded the plaintiffs their commissions. As result Marshall’s decision established judicial review allowing federal courts to nullify acts of Congress that violate the Constitution. Despite the immediate limitations Marshall place on the court his actions would

United States v. Jones had helped established what would be considered intrusive and it would be easy to see that the accumulation of such personal information through cell phone location data would qualify as overly invasive. In Smith v. Maryland, the court had stood by the decision that “a personal travelling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another because he voluntarily conveys to anyone who wants to look the fact that he was traveling over particular roads in a particular direct, the fact of whatever stops he made, and the fact of his final destination.”

The Cherokees provided the best example of Native Americans who understood their rights most clearly as they demonstrated in their plight objecting the Cherokee removal and as they exhibited in the construction of a constitution strikingly similar to the United States constitution as well as those of the states, carefully outlining their rights in an organized coherent manner. Consistent with the federal and state constitutions, the Cherokee constitution reflected a profound belief in republicanism, a representative form of government in which those eligible to vote elected individuals to make laws to protect their life, liberty, and property.