Provides a brief summary and the text of Chief Justice Brennan's opinion of the Supreme Court in this case involving libel.

This mini-lesson covers the basics of the Supreme Court decision that determined that Dred Scott, having lived in a free territory, was not entitled to his freedom. Young scholars learn about the impact of the Court's decision, and how...

Learn about the historically important 1873 Slaughter-House Cases on civil rights, which became the first Supreme Court interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

This site is from a unit called 'African-Americans in the Land of Equality.' It looks at the 1954 decision by the Supreme Court in the Brown v. Board of Education case that ended school segregation.

This mini-lesson covers the basics of the Supreme Court's decision that overturned "separate but equal" in public schools. Students learn about segregation and "equality under the law," and they use what they learned to craft compound...

Provides facts about the Supreme Court case Shelley v. Kraemer, including an abstract, links to written opinions of the Court, and how each of the nine justices ruled upon the case.

This mini-lesson covers the basics of the Supreme Court's decision that struck down state bans on interracial marriage. Students learn about the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, and its use in court cases to challenge a range of...

This mini-lesson examines the Supreme Court's ruling that the 14th Amendment's Citizenship Clause did not apply to American Indians born on Native reservations. Students analyze a primary document and discover how the lack of citizenship...

This podcast episode focuses on the 1898, the Supreme Court landmark case that Wong Kim Ark, a child of Chinese parents who was himself born in San Francisco, was indeed an American citizen. This right to citizenship derived from...

The U.S. Supreme Court case that overturned Plessy v. Ferguson and dealt with the issues of equal protection and racial discrimination. This resource provides an abstract containing a concise summary, a link to the full text of the...

Learn about the Dred Scott decision and why it changed the course of American history even though many now consider it the worst opinion ever rendered by the U.S. Supreme Court. Includes full-page scans of the decision, a transcription,...

This page provides the background of the case and the Supreme Court's decision.