Identify and summarize landmark cases and their impact on civil rights and individual liberties.

The history of the protection and extension of civil rights in the United States of America is closely tied to several “landmark” Supreme Court cases. These unusually significant court decisions serve as landmarks for judges, lawmakers, law enforcement, and citizens. They formally reiterate and clarify the rights secured to and enjoyed by the American people.

The following are key Supreme Court Cases you should be familiar with as an informed participant in the American political process:

Dred Scott v. Sandford (1856)

See "The Fourteenth Amendment" on page 17 of this lesson.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

In spite of the official end of slavery and the extension of full constitutional rights and privileges to black Americans, it would be nearly one hundred years after the Civil War before real progress was made toward the realization of those rights and privileges. As has been noted, the guarantee of rights on paper and the actual protection of those rights in practice are, in many instances, two entirely different matters.

In the South, former slaves were treated indifferently at best. At worst, they were harassed, beaten, and even murdered. While much of the discrimination and harassment was perpetrated by private individuals, many forms of discrimination had the full force of the law behind them. While the comparative poverty of former slaves and social norms had kept blacks and whites apart in the decades immediately following the Civil War, governments across the South began enacting laws, commonly referred to as “Jim Crow” laws, requiring blacks and whites to use separate public facilities, including trains, buses, restaurants, theaters, and schools.

These laws seemed to be blatant violations of the “equal protection” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Several suits were filed in response to arrests made for violating segregation laws. Ultimately, a case made it to the Supreme Court and many observers believed the laws would be declared unconstitutional. In its decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, however, the Court ruled that blacks and whites could be required to use separate facilities so long as they were “equal.” The “separate but equal” standard, as it came to be called, however, produced very little in terms of equality. In practice, the separate facilities provided for blacks were woefully unequal.