Terms and Cases

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Terms and Cases

• Module 11
• Chapters 11 and 12

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Cases Chapters 11

• Pollock v. Farmers Loan Trust Co. (1895)
  Invalidated the income tax as unconstitutional
  the decision was overturned by ratification of
  the Sixteenth Amendment. The Sixteenth Amendment
  was designed to give constitutional authority for
  a national income tax. The original Constitution
  had provided in
• Article I, Section 9, that
• No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be
  laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or
  Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.
• On the basis of this elusive language that did
  not specifically define a direct tax, the
  Supreme Court had, in Pollock v. Farmers Loan
  and Trust Company (1895), declared that a tax on
  income was a direct tax and that, as a tax on
  such income rather than on a states population,
  it was therefore void. The Sixteenth Amendment
  reversed this judgment, the third such amendment
  to overturn a Supreme Court decision

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Terms Chapter 11

• Blue Laws Laws requiring the closure of certain
  businesses or forbidding the sale of certain
  items on Sundays.
• Direct Taxes Unidentified taxes, prohibited from
  being laid by Article I, Section 9 except
  according to a states population. The
  prohibition against direct taxes has been
  superseded by the legalization of the income tax
  in the Sixteenth Amendment.
• Progressive Era The time period early in the
  twentieth century during which there was a strong
  push for reform and democratization. Amendments
  16 through 19 are associated with this period.

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Terms Chapter 11

• Ratification Formal approval. The Constitution
  requires that treaties be ratified by two-thirds
  of the Senate and constitutional amendments by
  three-fourths of the state legislatures or
  conventions.
• Seneca Falls Convention A convention that met in
  New York in 1848 and issued a call for womens
  suffrage that eventually resulted in adoption of
  the Nineteenth Amendment (1920).

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Cases Chapter 12

• Coleman v. Miller (1939) The question of
  assessing contemporaneousness to amendments has
  been left in Coleman v. Miller (1939) to
  Congress, and it accepted the 27th amendment by
  an overwhelming vote on May 20, 1992.
• Dillon v. Gloss (1921) stated that an amendment
  should reflect a contemporary consensus to its
  limit. On the negative side for the 27th
  amendment, ratifications spread out over a
  two-hundred-year period stretch the idea.
• Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections (1966), the
  Supreme Court voided the use of such poll taxes
  in state elections on the authority of the equal
  protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
  The right to vote can now be exercised regardless
  of ones ability to pay for this privilege.

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Cases Chapter 12

• Marbury v. Madison (1803) In turning away a
  request by an individual who had been appointed
  as a justice of the peace but had never received
  his commission, the Court ruled that a section of
  the Judiciary Act of 1789 that seemed to grant
  the Court original jurisdiction was
  unconstitutional and therefore void, therefore
  asserting the Courts power of judicial review.
  Lame-duck representatives, readers may recall,
  created the judicial seats that came to be
  contested in the case of Marbury v. Madison
  (1803), which established the principle of
  judicial review of national legislation.
  Similarly, in 1873, an outgoing Congress had
  approved the so-called Salary Grab Act, boosting
  salaries form 5,000 to 7,500 per year and
  applying the law retroactively to the beginning
  of the session, while in 1922 an outgoing
  Congress had adopted a ship subsidy bill, despite
  the fact that voters had rejected many of the
  bills sponsors.

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Cases Chapter 12

• Oregon v. Mitchell (1970) An attempt to extend
  the franchise to eighteen-year-olds by
  legislation was struck down by the Supreme Court,
  congressional power being recognized in the case
  of federal but not state elections. Fearing that
  different standards could lead to an election
  nightmare, Congress proposed and the states
  quickly ratified the Twenty-sixth Amendment to
  eliminate this disparity.
• United States v. Classic (1941) declared that
  primaries were so integral to the electoral
  process that they were limited by constitutional
  restrictions.

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Terms Chapter 12

• Emoluments A constitutional term used to refer
  to salaries or other monetary rewards.
• Franchise The right to vote
• Grandfather Clauses Provisions, directed against
  racial minorities and eventually overturned by
  the courts, which restricted voting to those who
  could prove that their grandfathers had voted
  prior to 1867, that is, prior to the time that
  African Americans were given this right.

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Terms Chapter 12

• Lame Ducks Elected officials who are finishing
  out their terms but already know that they will
  not be returning to office. The Twentieth
  Amendment shortened the period during which
  lame-duck presidents and members of Congress
  serve.
• Literacy Tests Tests, now suspended by law,
  which were once a prerequisite for exercising the
  right to vote such tests, combined with
  understanding clauses, were often administered
  in a racially discriminatory fashion.
• Poll Taxes Taxes levied as a condition to
  voting. The Twenty-fourth Amendment prohibited
  the payment of such poll taxes as a condition for
  voting in federal elections.
• Suffrage The right to vote.

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Ex-Felon Disenfranchisement

• The roots of felony disenfranchisement laws can
  be traced back to ancient Greek and Roman
  traditions. Disenfranchisement was commonly
  imposed on individuals convicted of "infamous"
  crimes as part of their "civil death," whereby
  these persons would lose all rights and claim to
  property. The practice of disenfranchisement was
  transplanted to American by English settlers.

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Ex-Felon Disenfranchisement

• Upon the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment,
  giving African-Americans the right to vote,
  Southern States began to use seemingly neutral
  voting qualifications - e.g. literacy tests,
  property requirements, grandfather clauses, tests
  for good moral character and criminal
  disenfranchisement - to deny the vote to blacks.
  While disenfranchisement laws had existed long
  before these practices began, a number of
  Southern States tailored these laws to maximize
  their impacts on African-Americans. Unlike most
  other laws that burden the right of citizens to
  vote based on some form of social status, felony
  disenfranchisement laws have been held to be
  constitutional.

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Ex-Felon Disenfranchisement

• In Richardson v. Ramirez, the United States
  Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of
  felon disenfranchisement statutes, finding that
  the practice did not deny equal protection to
  disenfranchised voters. The Court looked to
  Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the
  United States Constitution, which proclaims that
  States which deny the vote to male citizens,
  except on the basis of "participation of
  rebellion, or other crime," will suffer a
  reduction in representation.

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Ex-Felon Disenfranchisement

• Based on this language, the Court found that this
  amounted to an "affirmative sanction" of the
  practice of felon disenfranchisement, and the
  14th Amendment could not prohibit in one section
  that which is expressly authorized in another.
  However, many critics, argue that Section 2 of
  the 14th Amendment does not represent an
  endorsement of felon disenfranchisement statutes
  as constitutional in light of the equal
  protection clause but is limited only to the
  issue of reduced representation.

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Ex-Felon Disenfranchisement

• The United States Supreme Court has generally
  upheld felony disenfranchisement laws, but has at
  the same time struck down those that were clearly
  intended to disenfranchise particular racial
  groups, or which allowed disenfranchisement based
  on the commission of acts so minor that they
  could not be classified as felonies.

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Ex-Felon Disenfranchisement

• Current Application
• Today, only four states continue to impose a
  life-long denial of the right to vote to all
  citizens with a felony record, absent some
  extraordinary intervention by the Governor or
  State legislature. These are Florida, Iowa,
  Kentucky, and Virginia. In July, 2005, Iowa
  Governor Vilsack issued an executive order
  restoring the right to vote for all persons who
  have completed supervision. However, the lifetime
  prohibition on voting remains Iowa law. Nine
  other states disenfranchise ex-felons for various
  lengths of time following the completion of their
  probation or parole. Almost every state prohibits
  felons from voting while incarcarated, on
  probation, or on parole.

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Salaries

• The current salary for rank-and-file members of
  the House and Senate is 158,100 per year.  
• Senate LeadershipMajority Leader - 175,600 
  Minority Leader - 175,600 
• House Leadership Speaker of the House -
  203,000Majority Leader - 175,600Minority
  Leader - 175,600 
• Current salary for the Chief Justice is around
  202,900 per year, while Associate Justices make
  about 194,200.
• Presidents Salary is 400,000

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Salaries

• From 1789 to 1815, members of Congress received
  only a per diem (daily payment) of 6.00 while in
  session. Members began receiving an annual salary
  in 1815, when they were paid 1,500 per year.