Thirteen Supreme Court Rulings That Changed America
The Supreme Court has decided thousands of cases over its 235-year history, but a small handful genuinely changed the country. From the 1803 ruling that gave the Court its power to strike down laws, to the 2022 decision that overturned half a century of abortion precedent, these are the thirteen Supreme Court rulings that have most shaped how Americans live, vote, work, marry, and are treated by the Constitution. Some made history. Some had to be undone. All of them changed America.
US Political History · May 28, 2026
Thirteen Supreme Court rulings, spanning 220 years, that shaped how Americans live, vote, work, marry, are treated by the police, and are protected by the Constitution. Some made history. Some had to be undone. All of them changed the country.
The Supreme Court has decided thousands of cases in its 235-year history. Most are forgotten within a decade. A handful are remembered forever, because the country was genuinely different on the day after the ruling than it was the day before.This article looks at thirteen of those rulings, in chronological order. Some established the very framework of American government. Some ended legal barriers that had stood for generations. Some, viewed today, are remembered as cautionary lessons rather than triumphs. Two of them were so consequential that they had to be undone by constitutional amendment. Two more were overturned by later Courts. One was formally repudiated by the Court itself, in 2018, more than seventy years after it was decided.
What follows is not a ranking. The cases are arranged by the year they were decided, from 1803 to 2022, and each is given the same treatment: the story behind the case, the holding the Court actually issued, the impact on American life, and where it stands today. The goal is to make these foundational rulings genuinely understandable, not to argue about which one matters most.
Two centuries of decisions, on one timeline
All thirteen rulings plotted by year, color-coded by topic area, and grouped by the Chief Justice who presided over each. The dashed lines show where the Court (or the Constitution itself) later reversed course.
The thirteen rulings, at a glance
Before getting into each case in depth, here is the full set in one table: case name, year decided, the final vote, the Chief Justice who presided, and where the ruling stands today.| Case | Year | Vote | Chief Justice | Status today |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marbury v. Madison | 1803 | 4-0 | Marshall | Good law |
| McCulloch v. Maryland | 1819 | 7-0 | Marshall | Good law |
| Dred Scott v. Sandford | 1857 | 7-2 | Taney | Overturned by 13th and 14th Amendments |
| Plessy v. Ferguson | 1896 | 7-1 | Fuller | Overturned by Brown (1954) |
| Korematsu v. United States | 1944 | 6-3 | Stone | Formally repudiated (2018) |
| Brown v. Board of Education | 1954 | 9-0 | Warren | Good law |
| Gideon v. Wainwright | 1963 | 9-0 | Warren | Good law |
| Miranda v. Arizona | 1966 | 5-4 | Warren | Modified but largely intact |
| Loving v. Virginia | 1967 | 9-0 | Warren | Good law |
| Roe v. Wade | 1973 | 7-2 | Burger | Overturned by Dobbs (2022) |
| District of Columbia v. Heller | 2008 | 5-4 | Roberts | Good law |
| Citizens United v. FEC | 2010 | 5-4 | Roberts | Good law |
| Obergefell v. Hodges | 2015 | 5-4 | Roberts | Good law |
Case 1 of 13 · Federal Power
Marbury v. Madison
Decided February 24, 1803 · Marshall Court
The holding: The Supreme Court has the power to strike down laws passed by Congress when they conflict with the Constitution. This power is called judicial review, and it is what makes the Supreme Court the Supreme Court.
The story
In the final hours of his presidency in March 1801, John Adams signed dozens of last-minute judicial appointments to fill federal positions before Thomas Jefferson took office. One of those appointments went to William Marbury, who was made a justice of the peace for the District of Columbia.There was a problem. The paperwork formalizing Marbury's appointment, called a commission, had been signed and sealed but never actually delivered. When Jefferson took office the next day, he told his new Secretary of State, James Madison, not to deliver it. Marbury sued, asking the Supreme Court to order Madison to hand it over under a law called the Judiciary Act of 1789.
The case landed in front of John Marshall, who had been appointed Chief Justice just weeks before. Marshall faced a genuine dilemma. If he ordered Madison to deliver the commission, Jefferson and Madison would almost certainly ignore him, and the Court would be humiliated as powerless. If he refused to issue the order, the Court would look like it was backing down to the executive branch. Either path damaged the Court's standing.
The ruling
Marshall's solution was brilliant. He wrote an opinion that did three things at once. First, he said Marbury was entitled to his commission and that Madison was wrong to withhold it. Second, he said that under normal circumstances, courts could and should order officials to deliver such things. And third, he said that the Supreme Court could not, in this case, issue that order, because the specific provision of the Judiciary Act of 1789 that gave the Court the power to do so was unconstitutional.The Court, Marshall held, could not exercise a power that Congress had given it if the Constitution had not given Congress the power to grant it in the first place. The Constitution outranked the statute. And it was the Court's job to say so.
That last move was the entire ballgame. By ruling against Marbury, Marshall avoided a direct confrontation with Jefferson and Madison. By ruling against an act of Congress, Marshall established for the first time that the Supreme Court had the power to do exactly that.
The impact
Before Marbury, it was an open question whether the federal courts could strike down laws passed by Congress. The Constitution does not actually say they can. The phrase "judicial review" does not appear anywhere in the document. Marshall built the doctrine out of inference and reasoning, and once it was built, it became the foundation for everything the Supreme Court has done since.Every other case in this article exists because of Marbury. The Supreme Court could not have overturned segregation in Brown, expanded gun rights in Heller, or struck down or established abortion rights in Roe and Dobbs, if it did not first have the power Marshall established in 1803. Marbury is the case that made the Court a coequal branch of government rather than a junior partner.
Where it stands today
Marbury has never been seriously challenged. Judicial review is so deeply embedded in the American constitutional system that no major political figure has called for its repeal in modern times. The Court has used the power Marshall established to strike down hundreds of federal laws since 1803, and thousands of state laws. It is the most consequential single sentence in American legal history: "A Law repugnant to the Constitution is void."Case 2 of 13 · Federal Power
McCulloch v. Maryland
Decided March 6, 1819 · Marshall Court
The holding: Congress can do things the Constitution does not explicitly say it can do, as long as those things are necessary and proper to carrying out its enumerated powers. And no state may tax a federal institution.
The story
In 1816, Congress chartered the Second Bank of the United States. The bank held federal funds, issued bank notes that competed with state-chartered banks, and was deeply unpopular in many states, especially after the financial panic of 1818 closed dozens of state banks.Maryland struck back. In 1818, the state legislature passed a law imposing a heavy tax on any bank operating in Maryland that had not been chartered by the state, which in practical terms meant the Second Bank's Baltimore branch. The Baltimore branch's cashier, James William McCulloch, refused to pay. Maryland sued, won in state court, and the case made its way to the Supreme Court.
Two questions were in front of the Court. First, did Congress have the constitutional authority to create a bank at all? The Constitution does not list "chartering banks" among the powers it gives to Congress. Second, even if the bank was legal, could Maryland tax it?
The ruling
Marshall again wrote for a unanimous Court, and he again expanded the powers of the federal government in the process. On the first question, Marshall pointed to the Constitution's Necessary and Proper Clause, which gives Congress the power to make all laws "necessary and proper" to carry out its other powers. Congress has the power to tax, to spend, to coin money, to borrow on the credit of the United States. A national bank, Marshall reasoned, was a perfectly reasonable instrument for carrying out those powers. Congress did not need explicit constitutional permission to charter one.This is the doctrine of implied powers, and it is the legal basis for almost everything the modern federal government does. Social Security, the Federal Reserve, the Interstate Highway System, NASA, the Centers for Disease Control: none of these are mentioned in the Constitution. All of them rest on the Necessary and Proper Clause as Marshall interpreted it in McCulloch.
On the second question, Marshall was even more emphatic. Maryland could not tax the federal bank. "The power to tax involves the power to destroy," Marshall wrote, and a state could not be permitted to destroy what the federal government had lawfully created. Federal law was supreme over state law on questions within federal authority.
The impact
McCulloch did two enormous things at once. It dramatically expanded what Congress could do, and it firmly established that the federal government sits above the states on any question that falls within federal power. Together, these two principles, implied powers and federal supremacy, are the foundation of the modern American government.Without McCulloch, the New Deal of the 1930s could not have happened in anything like its actual form. Neither could the civil rights legislation of the 1960s, the environmental regulations of the 1970s, the Affordable Care Act, or any of a thousand other federal initiatives that go beyond the words explicitly written into the Constitution.
Where it stands today
McCulloch remains good law and is one of the most-cited Supreme Court opinions in American history. Marshall's interpretation of the Necessary and Proper Clause has been challenged at the margins, particularly during the New Deal and again in the 2010s during litigation over the Affordable Care Act, but the core doctrine has never been seriously threatened. Implied powers and federal supremacy are settled constitutional law.Case 3 of 13 · Civil Rights
Dred Scott v. Sandford
Decided March 6, 1857 · Taney Court
The holding: Black Americans, whether free or enslaved, were not and could never be citizens of the United States. Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in federal territories. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was unconstitutional.
The story
Dred Scott was born into slavery in Virginia around 1799. His enslaver, an Army surgeon, took him to live for years in Illinois, a free state, and in the Wisconsin Territory, where the Missouri Compromise of 1820 had outlawed slavery. When the surgeon's widow later moved with Scott back to Missouri, a slave state, Scott sued for his freedom in 1846 on the grounds that his years of residence in free territory had made him a free man.It took eleven years for the case to reach the Supreme Court. By the time it arrived, the country was teetering on the edge of civil war over slavery. The Court could have decided the case narrowly, on the technical question of whether Scott's years in free territory had emancipated him. Chief Justice Roger Taney chose not to.
The ruling
Taney wrote an opinion that went far beyond what the case required. He held three things, each one more sweeping than the last.First, that Scott could not bring his suit at all, because Black Americans, whether enslaved or free, were not and never could be citizens of the United States. Taney wrote that Black Americans had "no rights which the white man was bound to respect." Citizenship under the Constitution, he held, was reserved for white people.
Second, that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in federal territories. The Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had drawn a line across the country and declared slavery illegal in all federal territories north of it, was therefore unconstitutional. Slavery, Taney held, was a property right protected by the Fifth Amendment.
Third, that even residence in free territory did not make an enslaved person free. The "once free, always free" doctrine that had governed Missouri courts for decades was rejected.
The impact
The Dred Scott decision is widely regarded by legal historians as the worst ruling the Supreme Court has ever issued. It did not calm sectional tensions, as Taney hoped it would; it inflamed them. By telling Northern abolitionists that Congress could do nothing to stop the spread of slavery into the territories, the decision destroyed the political compromises that had held the country together for decades and accelerated the slide into civil war.Abraham Lincoln, then a former one-term congressman from Illinois, denounced the ruling in his 1858 Senate campaign against Stephen Douglas. The Republican Party, founded in 1854, made opposition to the Dred Scott decision a central plank of its 1860 presidential platform. Lincoln won that election. Eleven Southern states seceded. The Civil War followed.
Where it stands today
Dred Scott was overturned not by the Court itself but by constitutional amendment. The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery. The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, established that all persons born in the United States are citizens of the United States and of the state where they reside. Together, these two amendments repudiated every part of Taney's ruling.Scott himself did not live to see it. He was granted his freedom by his enslaver's family less than three months after the decision, and died of tuberculosis the following year, in September 1858. The Civil War began three years later.
Case 4 of 13 · Civil Rights
Plessy v. Ferguson
Decided May 18, 1896 · Fuller Court
The holding: Racial segregation laws, including those requiring separate railway cars for Black and white passengers, did not violate the Constitution as long as the separated facilities were claimed to be equal. This is the "separate but equal" doctrine.
The story
In 1890, Louisiana passed the Separate Car Act, which required railway companies to provide separate cars for Black and white passengers and made it a criminal offense for a passenger to sit in a car not designated for their race. A group of New Orleans civil rights activists called the Comité des Citoyens decided to test the law in court.They selected Homer Plessy, a 30-year-old shoemaker who was seven-eighths white and one-eighth Black, on the theory that his ambiguous appearance would make the racial classification clearly arbitrary. On June 7, 1892, Plessy boarded a whites-only car of the East Louisiana Railway and announced his racial classification to the conductor. He was arrested as planned.
His legal team, led by Albion Tourgée, argued that the Separate Car Act violated both the Thirteenth Amendment (which abolished slavery) and the Fourteenth Amendment (which guaranteed equal protection). The case worked its way up through the Louisiana courts and reached the Supreme Court in April 1896.
The ruling
The Court ruled 7-1 against Plessy. Justice Henry Billings Brown wrote the majority opinion, holding that the Fourteenth Amendment was meant to guarantee political equality but not what he called social equality. As long as the separated facilities were equal in quality, the majority reasoned, separation itself did not violate the Constitution. The Court explicitly pointed to public schools as a long-accepted example of constitutional segregation.The lone dissent came from Justice John Marshall Harlan, a former slaveholder from Kentucky who had become one of the Court's most committed defenders of Reconstruction-era civil rights. Harlan wrote one of the most quoted dissenting opinions in American legal history: "Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens." He warned that the decision would, in time, prove as harmful as the Dred Scott ruling four decades earlier.
The impact
Plessy v. Ferguson became the constitutional foundation of Jim Crow. For the next 58 years, "separate but equal" was the law of the land. Southern states used the ruling to mandate racial segregation in nearly every area of public life: schools, hospitals, parks, swimming pools, drinking fountains, restaurants, hotels, theaters, libraries, courtrooms, public transportation, and cemeteries.The "equal" half of "separate but equal" was almost never enforced. Black schools received a fraction of the per-pupil funding that white schools did. Black hospitals were under-resourced or non-existent. The Court that decided Plessy did not require any showing of actual equality, and in practice, segregated facilities for Black Americans were systematically inferior for the entirety of the doctrine's 58-year life.
Where it stands today
Plessy was overturned by the Supreme Court's 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, which is the next case on this list. The reversal was unanimous. Justice Harlan's lone dissent in 1896 became the legal foundation of the civil rights movement, and his "color-blind Constitution" phrase has been cited by every Supreme Court of the modern era. Plessy itself sits in what legal scholars call the "anti-canon" of American constitutional law, alongside Dred Scott as a decision so wrong that it now serves primarily as a cautionary example.Case 5 of 13 · Civil Liberties
Korematsu v. United States
Decided December 18, 1944 · Stone Court
The holding: The federal government's wartime decision to forcibly relocate Japanese Americans on the West Coast to internment camps did not violate the Constitution. National security in time of war could justify race-based restrictions on the civil liberties of American citizens.
The story
Two months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, on February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. The order authorized the military to designate exclusion zones from which any person could be removed. In practice, it was used to forcibly relocate approximately 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast, including about 70,000 American citizens, to internment camps in remote interior locations of the country.Fred Korematsu was an American citizen born in Oakland, California to Japanese immigrant parents. He refused to comply with the exclusion order, was arrested in May 1942, and was convicted of violating it. He appealed, arguing that the order racially discriminated against him in violation of his constitutional rights.
The ruling
The Court upheld Korematsu's conviction by a 6-3 vote. Justice Hugo Black, writing for the majority, accepted the military's argument that the exclusion was necessary to address potential espionage or sabotage on the West Coast. Black wrote that "pressing public necessity may sometimes justify the existence of such restrictions; racial antagonism never can," but the majority concluded that the wartime emergency, not racial antagonism, drove the order.Three justices dissented in unusually strong terms. Justice Frank Murphy called the decision the "legalization of racism." Justice Owen Roberts called it the conviction of a citizen "for not submitting to imprisonment in a concentration camp, based on his ancestry." Justice Robert Jackson's dissent contained the phrase that would later become the case's most quoted line: the precedent, he wrote, "lies about like a loaded weapon, ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need."
The impact
The internment continued through the end of World War II. The last camps closed in March 1946. About two-thirds of those interned were American citizens. Many lost homes, businesses and savings. Some never returned to the West Coast.The reckoning came slowly. In 1976, President Gerald Ford formally rescinded Executive Order 9066. In 1983, a federal district court overturned Korematsu's individual conviction after evidence emerged that the government had suppressed intelligence reports finding no Japanese American sabotage threat. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, which formally apologized for the internment and provided $20,000 in reparations to each surviving internee. Roughly $1.6 billion was eventually paid out.
Where it stands today
The Korematsu decision itself remained technically on the books for 74 years, never overturned by the Supreme Court. In 2018, in the case Trump v. Hawaii (which dealt with travel restrictions on several Muslim-majority countries), Chief Justice John Roberts used his majority opinion to formally repudiate Korematsu. "Korematsu was gravely wrong the day it was decided, has been overruled in the court of history, and, to be clear, has no place in law under the Constitution," Roberts wrote. It is the closest the Supreme Court has come to overruling a case without doing so in a directly relevant proceeding. Fred Korematsu himself died in 2005. President Bill Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998.Case 6 of 13 · Civil Rights
Brown v. Board of Education
Decided May 17, 1954 · Warren Court
The holding: Racial segregation in public schools is inherently unequal, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and is therefore unconstitutional. "Separate but equal" has no place in public education.
The story
By the early 1950s, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund had been building a long, careful legal campaign against school segregation. The strategy, developed by Thurgood Marshall and a team of civil rights lawyers, was to challenge segregation not in the South, where opposition would be fiercest, but in border states where the cases would be cleaner.The case that became Brown v. Board of Education was actually five consolidated cases from Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware and the District of Columbia. The named plaintiff was Oliver Brown, a Topeka, Kansas welder whose daughter Linda had been forced to attend a Black elementary school 21 blocks from her home rather than the white school 7 blocks away.
The case was first argued in December 1952 before a Court that was deeply divided and clearly uncomfortable with the prospect of overturning Plessy. Chief Justice Fred Vinson died in September 1953, before the Court could rule. President Dwight Eisenhower replaced him with Earl Warren, the former governor of California. The case was reargued in December 1953 with Warren now presiding.
The ruling
Warren spent five months working personally to build a unanimous Court. He understood that a 5-4 or even 7-2 ruling overturning segregation would be politically catastrophic and easily resisted. Only a unanimous opinion, signed by every justice, could give the ruling its full moral and legal weight.He got it. On May 17, 1954, Warren read a brief, plain-language opinion for a unanimous nine-justice Court. "We conclude that in the field of public education, the doctrine of separate but equal has no place," he wrote. "Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." Plessy v. Ferguson, the 58-year-old foundation of the entire Jim Crow legal system, was overruled as applied to public schools.
The impact
Brown did not immediately desegregate American schools. The Court's 1955 follow-up ruling (often called Brown II) directed school districts to desegregate "with all deliberate speed," a phrase that proved ambiguous enough to delay meaningful integration for years. Massive resistance movements emerged across the South. Virginia closed entire school districts rather than integrate them. The Little Rock Crisis of 1957 required President Eisenhower to deploy the 101st Airborne Division to enforce integration at Central High School.But Brown did something more important than producing immediate desegregation. It established that the federal courts would no longer tolerate state-mandated racial segregation, and it gave the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s a legal foundation that no governor, mayor or legislature could ultimately overcome. Every major civil rights ruling that followed (in housing, voting, employment, public accommodations, marriage) traced back to Brown.
Where it stands today
Brown remains one of the most universally praised decisions in American legal history. It is taught in nearly every American high school. The phrase "separate but equal has no place" is one of the most-quoted lines in the entire Supreme Court canon. The decision's 70th anniversary in 2024 was marked with bipartisan commemorations. No serious legal scholar or political figure of any ideology challenges its core holding.Case 7 of 13 · Criminal Procedure
Gideon v. Wainwright
Decided March 18, 1963 · Warren Court
The holding: The Sixth Amendment right to an attorney applies to every criminal defendant in state court, not just federal court. If a defendant cannot afford a lawyer, the state must provide one at no cost.
The story
In June 1961, a 51-year-old drifter named Clarence Earl Gideon was charged with breaking into a Panama City, Florida pool hall and stealing a small amount of cash and beer. He had a long, modest criminal record, almost no money, and an eighth-grade education. When he asked the trial judge to appoint a lawyer for him, the judge refused, citing Florida law that required appointed counsel only in capital cases.Gideon defended himself. He was convicted and sentenced to five years in state prison. From his cell at Florida State Prison, using prison library materials and writing in pencil on prison paper, he handwrote a five-page petition asking the Supreme Court to review his case. The Court agreed to hear it and appointed Abe Fortas, then one of the most prominent appellate lawyers in the country (and a future Supreme Court justice), to represent Gideon.
The ruling
The Court ruled unanimously that the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of counsel applied to state criminal proceedings through the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. Justice Hugo Black, who had himself dissented from a 1942 case that reached the opposite conclusion, wrote the majority opinion. "In our adversary system of criminal justice, any person haled into court, who is too poor to hire a lawyer, cannot be assured a fair trial unless counsel is provided for him," Black wrote.Gideon was retried in Panama City five months later, this time with a court-appointed lawyer. He was acquitted in about an hour.
The impact
Gideon v. Wainwright transformed the American criminal justice system. Within months of the ruling, thousands of Florida inmates were released or granted new trials because they had been convicted without counsel. Across the country, states were forced to build public defender systems essentially from scratch.Today, the United States has roughly 15,000 public defenders handling millions of cases per year. Approximately 80 percent of felony defendants in the United States are represented by court-appointed counsel because they cannot afford a private attorney. Every American who has ever been arrested and read their Miranda rights has been told "you have the right to an attorney; if you cannot afford one, one will be appointed for you." That second clause exists because of Gideon.
Where it stands today
Gideon is unchallenged as a matter of legal doctrine. The right to court-appointed counsel for indigent defendants is one of the foundational guarantees of American criminal procedure. The ongoing controversy is not about whether the right exists, but about whether it is adequately funded. Public defender offices in much of the country are severely under-resourced, with caseloads many times higher than recommended professional standards. The promise of Gideon, in many places, exists on paper but is strained by practical reality.Case 8 of 13 · Criminal Procedure
Miranda v. Arizona
Decided June 13, 1966 · Warren Court
The holding: Before any custodial interrogation, police must inform suspects of their right to remain silent, their right to an attorney, and the fact that anything they say can be used against them in court. Statements obtained without these warnings are generally inadmissible at trial.
The story
In March 1963, a 23-year-old named Ernesto Miranda was arrested in Phoenix, Arizona on suspicion of kidnapping and rape. He was interrogated for two hours by police officers without being told that he had a right to remain silent or that he was entitled to a lawyer. He confessed in writing. The confession was admitted at trial, he was convicted, and he was sentenced to 20 to 30 years in prison.His case was one of four similar cases consolidated for Supreme Court review, all of which involved confessions obtained during police interrogations without any warnings to the suspect about their constitutional rights. The Court used the cases to set out a comprehensive procedural rule for police questioning.
The ruling
Chief Justice Earl Warren, writing for a 5-4 majority, held that the Fifth Amendment's protection against self-incrimination required that before any custodial interrogation, police must clearly warn suspects of four things: that they have the right to remain silent, that anything they say can be used against them in court, that they have the right to consult with an attorney before and during questioning, and that if they cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided.If police failed to provide these warnings, any statements the suspect made could not be used as evidence at trial. This procedural rule became known as the Miranda warning, and the act of giving it became known as "Mirandizing" a suspect.
The dissents were sharp. Four justices argued that the Court was inventing a constitutional rule out of nothing and substantially handicapping legitimate law enforcement. Justice Byron White predicted the decision would set guilty criminals free.
The impact
The Miranda warning is now one of the most recognizable phrases in American culture, repeated in essentially every police drama and crime film for the past sixty years. "You have the right to remain silent..." is recited millions of times per year by American police officers. It is the most-quoted Supreme Court ruling in American pop culture.The practical impact on conviction rates was less dramatic than critics feared. Studies in the decades since have generally found that confession rates and conviction rates were not significantly reduced by the requirement. Most suspects, even after being warned, choose to talk to police anyway.
Where it stands today
Miranda has been modified by subsequent rulings (notably 1971's Harris v. New York, which allowed un-Mirandized statements to be used to impeach a defendant's testimony, and a 2010 ruling that suspects must affirmatively invoke their right to silence rather than simply remain silent). In 2000, the Court considered overturning Miranda outright in Dickerson v. United States and declined to do so by a 7-2 margin, with Chief Justice William Rehnquist writing that "Miranda has become embedded in routine police practice to the point where the warnings have become part of our national culture." Ernesto Miranda himself was retried without the confession, convicted again on other evidence, served his sentence, and was murdered in a bar fight in 1976.Case 9 of 13 · Personal Liberty
Loving v. Virginia
Decided June 12, 1967 · Warren Court
The holding: State laws banning interracial marriage violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. Marriage is a fundamental civil right that cannot be restricted on the basis of race.
The story
Richard Loving, a white construction worker, and Mildred Jeter, a Black and Indigenous woman, were childhood friends from rural Caroline County, Virginia. In 1958, when Mildred was 18 and pregnant, the couple drove to Washington, D.C. to get married, because Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924 made it a felony for a white person and a non-white person to marry.Five weeks after their wedding, at around 2 a.m., local sheriff's deputies entered the Lovings' bedroom and arrested them both. They pleaded guilty to violating the Racial Integrity Act and were sentenced to one year in prison, with the sentence suspended on the condition that they leave Virginia and not return together for 25 years. They moved to Washington, D.C., where they raised three children, but they wanted to come home.
In 1963, Mildred Loving wrote to Attorney General Robert Kennedy asking for help. He referred her to the American Civil Liberties Union, which took the case. The Lovings' lawyers eventually appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. When asked what he wanted his lawyer to tell the justices, Richard Loving said: "Tell the Court I love my wife, and it is just unfair that I can't live with her in Virginia."
The ruling
The Court ruled unanimously that Virginia's anti-miscegenation law was unconstitutional. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the opinion. "Marriage is one of the basic civil rights of man, fundamental to our very existence and survival," he wrote. The Equal Protection Clause forbade racial classifications, and the Due Process Clause protected the freedom to marry from arbitrary state interference.At the time of the ruling, 16 states still had laws on the books banning interracial marriage, all of them in the South or border South. All were struck down at once.
The impact
The Lovings returned to Virginia and lived together in Caroline County for the rest of their lives. Interracial marriage rates in the United States rose steadily after the ruling. According to Pew Research data, approximately 17 percent of newlyweds in the United States are now in interracial or interethnic marriages, more than five times the rate in 1967, when 3 percent of newlyweds were married to someone of a different race.Loving v. Virginia became one of the legal foundations of the modern doctrine of marriage as a fundamental constitutional right. That doctrine would prove decisive nearly fifty years later in Obergefell v. Hodges, the same-sex marriage case at the end of this list.
Where it stands today
Loving is one of the most universally accepted Supreme Court decisions in American history. No serious legal or political figure of any ideology challenges it. June 12, the anniversary of the ruling, is now commemorated annually in the United States as Loving Day, which celebrates interracial families. Richard Loving died in 1975 in a car accident caused by a drunk driver. Mildred Loving lived until 2008. The 2016 film "Loving" brought the couple's story to a new generation of Americans.Case 10 of 13 · Personal Liberty · A paired entry
Roe v. Wade (1973) & Dobbs v. Jackson (2022)
Two rulings, 49 years apart, on the same constitutional question
The combined holding: Roe (1973) established that the Constitution protects a right to abortion, derived from the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. Dobbs (2022) held that Roe was wrongly decided and that the Constitution does not protect a right to abortion. The question of whether abortion is legal is now decided by each state.
The story: Roe
In 1969, a 22-year-old Texas woman named Norma McCorvey discovered she was pregnant with her third child. Texas law made abortion a crime except to save the mother's life. McCorvey could not afford to travel out of state, and the adoption alternatives available to her were limited. Two young attorneys, Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington, were looking for a plaintiff to challenge the Texas law. McCorvey agreed, filing suit under the pseudonym Jane Roe in March 1970 against Henry Wade, the Dallas County district attorney.The case made its way to the Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments twice, first in 1971 and again in 1972. Justice Harry Blackmun, a Nixon appointee and former general counsel of the Mayo Clinic, was assigned to write the majority opinion. He spent a summer at the Mayo Clinic library researching the medical history of abortion.
The ruling: Roe
On January 22, 1973, the Court ruled 7-2 that the Constitution protected a right to abortion. Blackmun's opinion grounded the right in the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause, building on a line of earlier privacy cases including Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), which had protected the right of married couples to use contraception. The opinion created a trimester framework: in the first trimester, a state could not regulate abortion; in the second, a state could regulate it in the interest of the mother's health; in the third, after fetal viability, a state could ban it except to protect the life or health of the mother.Two justices dissented. Justice Byron White wrote that he could find "nothing in the language or history of the Constitution" to support the Court's ruling. Justice William Rehnquist argued that the right to abortion was not deeply rooted in American legal tradition. Both dissents foreshadowed the arguments that would eventually prevail nearly fifty years later.
The impact: Roe
Roe immediately invalidated abortion laws in 46 states. For the next 49 years, abortion in the United States was a federal constitutional right, with the precise scope of state regulation being litigated continuously. The 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey reaffirmed Roe's core holding but replaced the trimester framework with a viability-based standard and an "undue burden" test for state regulations.Roe became one of the most politically divisive Supreme Court rulings in modern American history. It reshaped the politics of judicial nominations, the political alignment of religious voters, the strategic priorities of activist organizations on both sides, and presidential elections for half a century.
The story: Dobbs
In 2018, Mississippi passed the Gestational Age Act, which banned most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The state's only abortion clinic, Jackson Women's Health Organization, sued. Lower federal courts struck down the law, holding it was clearly inconsistent with Roe and Casey, which had protected abortion through fetal viability (typically around 24 weeks).The case reached the Supreme Court in 2021. By that time, the composition of the Court had shifted significantly: three justices appointed by President Donald Trump (Neil Gorsuch in 2017, Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, and Amy Coney Barrett in 2020) had joined Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito to form a six-justice majority that was widely expected to be skeptical of Roe.
The ruling: Dobbs
On June 24, 2022, the Court ruled 6-3 to uphold the Mississippi law, and 5-4 to explicitly overrule Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. (Chief Justice Roberts voted to uphold the Mississippi law but would not have overruled Roe in this case.) Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion. "The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion," he wrote. "Roe and Casey must be overruled, and the authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives."The three dissenting justices, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, filed a joint dissent, an unusual move that emphasized the seriousness of their objection. They argued that the decision "says that from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of" and that the majority had abandoned the principle of stare decisis (respect for precedent).
The impact
The legal landscape changed essentially overnight. As of early 2026, abortion is banned in 13 states, restricted at six weeks gestation in 5 more, available with various other gestational limits in another 13 or so, and protected through viability or beyond in roughly 19 states plus the District of Columbia. Several states have adopted constitutional amendments protecting abortion rights at the state level. The Dobbs ruling has been politically consequential in nearly every federal and state election since 2022.Where it stands today
Dobbs is the operative ruling. Roe is no longer law. Whether any future Supreme Court will revisit Dobbs and restore Roe's holding, restrict abortion further at the federal constitutional level, or leave the question to the states indefinitely is a subject of ongoing legal and political contention. The constitutional question that occupied American politics for half a century remains unsettled in practice, even though it is settled at the moment as a matter of binding precedent.Case 11 of 13 · Personal Liberty
District of Columbia v. Heller
Decided June 26, 2008 · Roberts Court
The holding: The Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms, unconnected to service in a militia, including the right to keep a handgun in the home for self-defense. The District of Columbia's ban on handguns and its requirement that firearms in the home be kept disassembled or trigger-locked were therefore unconstitutional.
The story
For most of the 20th century, the Supreme Court had taken a narrow view of the Second Amendment, focused largely on the amendment's opening phrase about militias. The Court's primary Second Amendment ruling, United States v. Miller in 1939, had upheld a federal restriction on sawed-off shotguns. Most lower courts read the Second Amendment as protecting a collective right tied to militia service, not an individual right to possess firearms.In 1975, the District of Columbia enacted one of the strictest gun laws in the country, the Firearms Control Regulations Act. The law banned residents from owning handguns and required that any other lawfully owned firearms in the home be kept either disassembled or with a trigger lock in place. Dick Heller, a special police officer who carried a handgun on duty at a federal office building, applied for a permit to keep a handgun at home. He was denied. He sued.
The case became a vehicle for a long-running scholarly debate. A growing body of academic work, including from prominent liberal as well as conservative legal scholars, had argued that the historical evidence supported reading the Second Amendment as protecting an individual right. Heller was the case that brought that argument to the Supreme Court.
The ruling
In a 5-4 decision, the Court held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the majority opinion, conducting an extensive historical analysis of the amendment's text, its origins, and how it had been understood at the time of the founding.Scalia wrote that the right was not unlimited. He explicitly noted that "nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places." Reasonable regulations on the manner of carrying and the qualifications of owners were permissible. But a flat ban on the most common firearm Americans choose for self-defense in the home was not.
Two justices wrote dissents: Justice John Paul Stevens argued that the historical record supported a collective rather than individual right; Justice Stephen Breyer argued that even if an individual right existed, the District's regulations were reasonable.
The impact
Heller was the first time the Supreme Court had ever clearly held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right. Two years later, in McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010), the Court extended Heller to state and local governments. In 2022, in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, the Court further expanded Heller, holding that the right extends outside the home and that gun regulations must be consistent with the nation's historical tradition of firearms regulation.The practical impact on American gun laws has been substantial but bounded. Most existing gun regulations, including background check requirements, restrictions on certain types of weapons and accessories, and restrictions on who may possess firearms, have been upheld in lower courts as consistent with Heller. But outright handgun bans, like the one in the District of Columbia, are no longer permissible anywhere in the country.
Where it stands today
Heller is settled doctrine. The individual-right reading of the Second Amendment has not been seriously challenged at the Supreme Court since 2008, and the trend in subsequent decisions has been to expand rather than narrow it. Lower courts continue to litigate exactly which regulations are permissible under Heller, particularly after the Bruen decision's historical-tradition test. As of 2026, gun rights litigation is one of the most active areas of constitutional law in the federal courts.Case 12 of 13 · Civil Liberties
Citizens United v. FEC
Decided January 21, 2010 · Roberts Court
The holding: The First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent political spending by corporations, unions, and nonprofit organizations. Such entities have free speech rights when it comes to political expenditures, including funding television advertisements during election campaigns.
The story
Citizens United is a conservative nonprofit organization that, in 2008, produced a 90-minute documentary critical of then-Senator Hillary Clinton, who was running for the Democratic presidential nomination. The group wanted to make the film available on video-on-demand services and to air television advertisements promoting it during the primary campaign.The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (often called McCain-Feingold) prohibited corporations and unions from using their general treasury funds to pay for any "electioneering communication" mentioning a candidate within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. Citizens United sued, arguing that the law violated its First Amendment rights as applied to the documentary and its promotion.
The case was originally argued on narrow grounds, but the Court took the unusual step of asking the parties to re-argue the case on a broader question: whether two prior Supreme Court rulings (Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce in 1990 and parts of McConnell v. FEC in 2003) should be overturned.
The ruling
In a 5-4 decision, the Court overruled Austin in full and significant portions of McConnell. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion. He held that political speech is essential to democratic self-government, that the First Amendment protects such speech without regard to the identity of the speaker, and that corporations and unions have associational rights that include speaking on political matters through expenditures.Kennedy wrote that "the Government may not suppress political speech on the basis of the speaker's corporate identity." Independent expenditures (spending not coordinated with a candidate's campaign) could not be limited regardless of the source. Direct corporate contributions to candidates remained prohibited; the ruling addressed only independent expenditures.
Justice John Paul Stevens wrote a 90-page dissent, joined by three other justices. He argued that the majority had overturned a century of campaign finance regulation, that corporations were not the same as individual citizens for First Amendment purposes, and that the decision would "undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the Nation."
The impact
Citizens United transformed American campaign finance. In the years immediately after the ruling, "Super PACs" (Political Action Committees that can raise and spend unlimited amounts from corporations, unions and individuals as long as they do not coordinate with candidates) became central to federal campaigns. Spending on federal elections rose substantially. In the 2024 election cycle, total federal political spending reached approximately $16 billion (per OpenSecrets), more than three times the 2008 level.The ruling has been one of the most politically divisive Supreme Court decisions of the modern era. Polls have consistently shown majorities of Americans of both parties oppose the decision. Multiple constitutional amendments to overturn it have been proposed in Congress and in state legislatures. None has come close to passing.
Where it stands today
Citizens United remains good law. The Supreme Court has not revisited the question, and the trend in subsequent campaign-finance rulings has been to further loosen restrictions rather than tighten them. Critics of the decision continue to push for legislative or constitutional reforms; defenders argue that the ruling correctly recognized the breadth of political speech protected by the First Amendment. Like the other politically charged rulings in this list, Citizens United's long-term status will depend on the composition of future Supreme Courts and the political coalitions that nominate and confirm them.Case 13 of 13 · Personal Liberty
Obergefell v. Hodges
Decided June 26, 2015 · Roberts Court
The holding: The Fourteenth Amendment requires every state to license marriages between two people of the same sex and to recognize same-sex marriages lawfully performed in other states. Marriage is a fundamental right that cannot be denied on the basis of sexual orientation.
The story
The lead plaintiff, James Obergefell, married his partner of more than 20 years, John Arthur, in a medical transport plane on the tarmac of Baltimore-Washington International Airport in 2013. Arthur was dying of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The men were Ohio residents and had flown to Maryland because Maryland recognized same-sex marriages and Ohio did not.When Arthur died three months later, Ohio refused to list Obergefell as the surviving spouse on Arthur's death certificate. Obergefell sued. His case was consolidated with three others from Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee, raising two questions: whether the Fourteenth Amendment required states to license same-sex marriages, and whether it required states to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere.
By the time the case reached the Supreme Court in April 2015, the legal landscape had shifted enormously. The Court had struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act in 2013. Lower federal courts had been ruling state same-sex marriage bans unconstitutional at a rapid pace. By the time Obergefell was argued, same-sex marriage was legal in 36 states and the District of Columbia, covering more than 70 percent of the American population.
The ruling
The Court ruled 5-4 that the Constitution required all 50 states to license and recognize same-sex marriages. Justice Anthony Kennedy, who had written every previous major Supreme Court opinion expanding gay rights, wrote the majority opinion. He grounded the ruling in both the Due Process Clause (marriage as a fundamental liberty) and the Equal Protection Clause (denial of marriage to same-sex couples as a denial of equal treatment).Kennedy's closing paragraph became one of the most-quoted passages in modern Supreme Court history: "No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were."
The four dissenting justices wrote four separate dissents. Chief Justice John Roberts argued that the question of same-sex marriage should be left to the political process in each state. Justice Antonin Scalia called the majority's reasoning "a judicial Putsch." Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito wrote dissents focused on religious liberty concerns about the decision's implications.
The impact
Same-sex marriage became legal in all 50 states immediately. According to the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, the number of married same-sex couples in the United States has grown from roughly 380,000 at the time of the Obergefell ruling to approximately 823,000 today. In 2022, with concerns about the durability of Obergefell rising in the wake of Dobbs, Congress passed the bipartisan Respect for Marriage Act, which requires federal and state recognition of marriages valid in the state where they were performed, including same-sex and interracial marriages. The law was signed by President Joe Biden in December 2022.Where it stands today
Obergefell remains good law. The Respect for Marriage Act provides a federal statutory layer of protection that would not depend on the constitutional ruling if it were ever revisited. Public support for same-sex marriage rose steadily after the ruling, reaching a Gallup high of 71 percent in 2022 and 2023, and registering 68 percent in the most recent (May 2025) survey. As of 2026, no major political party in the United States has campaigned on overturning Obergefell, although individual legal challenges to its reasoning continue to be filed.What thirteen rulings have in common
Read in chronological order, the thirteen cases in this article tell a story about how the country has actually changed over 220 years. Slavery was abolished in part because the Supreme Court refused to abolish it, and the resulting backlash produced a war and three constitutional amendments. Segregation was made legal by one ruling and then made illegal by another. The right to a lawyer, the right to remain silent, the right to marry the person you love, the right to vote, the right to own a gun, and the right to spend money on political speech all rest, in part or in whole, on opinions that the Court has issued.A few patterns are worth flagging as the article closes.
Unanimity does the heaviest lifting
The most lasting decisions on this list, the ones least likely to be revisited, are largely the unanimous ones. Brown, Gideon and Loving were all 9-0. Marbury and McCulloch were unanimous. Those five rulings are about as close to bedrock constitutional law as anything the Court has produced. The 5-4 decisions, Miranda, Heller, Citizens United, Obergefell and the operative half of Dobbs, are more vulnerable to reconsideration by future Courts, and several of them have been at some point. A unanimous Court speaks with a kind of authority that a divided Court cannot match, and the rulings that have aged best are mostly the ones that did not split.The Warren Court did more than any other
Earl Warren served as Chief Justice from October 1953 to June 1969, a span of less than 16 years. In that time, his Court produced four of the thirteen rulings on this list (Brown, Gideon, Miranda, and Loving) and laid much of the groundwork for the modern understanding of civil rights, criminal procedure, and personal liberty. No other Chief Justice era comes close. The Marshall Court, which spans 34 years and produced Marbury and McCulloch, is the closest competitor in terms of foundational importance.The Court can change its mind, and has
Three of the thirteen rulings have been formally reversed: Dred Scott by the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, Plessy by Brown, and Roe by Dobbs. A fourth, Korematsu, has been formally repudiated by the Court itself, though not in a directly relevant proceeding. The Court has overruled itself on dozens of other doctrinal questions over the centuries. The idea that Supreme Court precedent is unchangeable is empirically false. The question is always how confident the Court is that the prior ruling was wrong, and how durable the political coalition is that has put justices on the bench who agree.The cases that change the country are usually about ordinary people
None of the people whose names appear on these cases were prominent figures when they filed their lawsuits. Marbury was a justice of the peace who never got to do his job. Dred Scott was an enslaved man. Homer Plessy was a 30-year-old shoemaker. Fred Korematsu was a 23-year-old welder. Clarence Gideon was a 51-year-old drifter convicted of breaking and entering a Florida pool hall. Ernesto Miranda was a 23-year-old laborer. Richard Loving was a construction worker. Norma McCorvey was an unemployed Texas waitress. James Obergefell was a widower whose husband had just died of ALS. Dick Heller was a special police officer.The Court rules on the largest constitutional questions in the country, and the cases that get there almost always start with people in extraordinarily ordinary circumstances. That is part of how the system works. It is also part of what makes these rulings worth understanding: every one of them began with a person whose life was being shaped by a law, and whose challenge to that law eventually changed the law for everyone.
Filed under: General Knowledge
