I did a lexis search on the words "landmark decision" and "supreme court". This, honestly, took less than five minutes.

In the "past six months" in just skipping around the law reviews that begin with the letters "A-B" the following decisions were listed as landmark:

Terry v. Ohio
Johnson v. McIntosh
Cherokee Nation v. Georgia
Worcester v. Georgia
US v. Wheeler
Montana v. US
Brandenberg v. Ohio
Powell v. Alabama
Johnson v. Zerbst
Betts v. Brady
Chandler v. Fretag
Gideon v. Wainright
Kelo v. New London's Bridge
Roe v. Wade
Youngstown Sheet

So clearly, this approach would have to be supplemented with substantial other limiting terms in the resolution.

The topic committee can "case" list topic can offer many landmark decisions - similar to the list that Ede provided. Listing the cases will capture most of the benefits of the "landmark" approach while avoiding the drawback of open ended wordings.

Steve Mancuso
 

II know I'm kind of an outsider, but I can't resist responding to this
and Ede's previous e-mail. (Besides, I'm hoping to debate at KU's
tournament, so maybe that gives me a bit of a right.)

I would strongly encourage you to word the topic so as to allow a
discussion of desegregation law. It opens up an absolutely fascinating
body of literature. It has shaped our communities more than any other
area of law, in my opinion (and I mean literally; like KC is laid out
the way it is because, in many ways, of deseg). I can understand how
some might be uncomfortable debating whether or not to uphold Brown,
but there are several lesser known cases that came about as a result
of brown that have had enormous impact on American society.

The "landmark" decisions:

Millikin v. Bradley I, 1974 -- "stipulated that a school district had
to be shown to have acted illegally to infringe on the constitutional
rights of minority students. This meant that an all-white district was
not under any legal obligation to join an inter-district desegregation
plan as long as it itself did not practice segregation within its own
district."

Millikin v. Bradley II, 1977 -- "imposing 'compensatory' education
policies to correct the inequities of... a (segregated) system."

Board of Education of Oklahoma City v. Dowell, 1991 -- "allowed a
school district that had been complying with desegregation court
orders for several years to achieve 'unitary status.' Such a district
could be released from the obligations of those court orders, even to
return to neighborhood schools."

Jenkins v. Missouri, 1995 -- Which, in my read of history, pretty much
ended the era of deseg in this country. (At any right, Clarence
Thomas's concurring opinion is easily the most interesting court
document I have ever read; despite its frank attack on affirmative
action, it has been upheld by some folks I know and respect as a
classic work in the cannon of black nationalist writings.)

Lastly, I can think of no more timely debate than one over the 1973
decision in San Antonio School District v. Rodriguez, where the "Court
held that education is not a fundamental right under the United States
Constitution."

Meditate on that one for a second. Education is not a fundamental right.

This decision is fueling a fight going on right now in almost every
state in the union, where there are court cases going on challenging
the distribution of education funds between separate school districts.

To be more blunt: At this juncture in history the question is no
longer, "Was Brown v. Board right?" Brown is dead. The question now
is, "Should we, or can we live up to Plessy v Ferguson?"

All best,

Joe Miller
KCC
 

Just throwin it out there- but what if there was a hybrid of areas and cases that required an affirmative to affect one of the areas of a list of cases. "landmark" could still be used to limit, resulting in good T debates on "landmark" and "affect." I think this would allow for a team to accumulate Neg arguments that have links based on the action within the area of one of the list cases, while being able to run a strong T argument to weed out miniscule cases.
... Just some thoughts
Rafi Ahmadullah
rafi@ksu.edu
 

ede:
I agree with you. I like the idea of Brown and Roe for similar reasons. They are highly controversial, provide access to a diverse array of literature and stable (I don't buy that roe will be overturned in the SQ).

Would you be a proponent of a rez that lists 5 or so "landmark" cases?
e
 

I will preface my post with the following:

I have only been losely following this process and discussions so far, but have decided its about time I start paying more attention.

That said...

ed lee said:

"Would you be a proponent of a rez that lists 5 or so "landmark" cases?"

This seems like the way to go to me. If we do it correctly, it will be able to access a wide enough array of broad area's of interest surrouding current law (race, gender, privacy, free speech, etc etc). In a community that seems highly divided, this offers an easy middle ground as far as the subjects of debates--and with the scope and importance of these 'landmark' style cases, the topic would be large enough to allow the aff to access lots of creative advantages.

If it would suit the community a little more (especially the anti-list/protect aff flexibility portion), we could craft a resolution that allowed the aff to effect the cases in the list in different ways. I guess I don't really know much about the law, but it seems like a word (probably not this one, but something like it) like overturn could protect aff flexibility will still giving the negative some predictable basis from which to generate ground.
 

I know this might be a bit lengthy for a comment on a post, but I just want Malcolm to know that some students from other districts are interested…

I think that it’s fine for the topic committee to only include decisions that they think are “landmark” decisions, but I do not think that a resolution can be constructed either as “The Supreme Court should overturn one or more of the following decisions” followed by a list of the five most important decisions ever, or as “The Supreme Court should overturn a landmark decision in one or more of the following areas.”

The biggest problem I have with the idea of a “landmark decisions” topic is that it would basically just be an areas topic. Brown v. Board would be an equal protection area, Roe would be an abortion area (plus, if Roe is a landmark decision, why not Griswold? An entire privacy area), Gideon would be a procedural due process area, and so on. The “landmark decisions” that everyone remembers are landmarks because they changed so much of everything that came after them. Abortion rights, sodomy rights, and access to contraceptives are ALL based on the right to privacy elucidated in Griswold, and so forth. This is basically the “problem of progeny” that Joe Patrice raised on the topic blog that wasn’t ever really resolved.

I’m also curious how the committee would decide what a “landmark” decision is – there are just so many that are so important for different reasons. I asked my dad the same question Ede asked his wife, and the list he came up with was: Miranda, Gibbons v. Ogden, “that case from a couple years ago, with the woman growing pot in her bathroom” (I think that means Gonzales v. Raich), Marbury v. Madison, Mapp, and Brown I and II. My list would include Palko (because incorporation is such a huge deal), Griswold, Hustler v. Falwell (just kidding. I just love the word ‘hustler’), Reynolds, and probably something dealing with the Commerce clause. But how will the committee decide which cases should be included? The Slaughterhouse Cases? McCulloch v. Maryland? Marbury v. Madison? I’d rather that we just be honest that we’re not going to be able to address all of the most important supreme court issues/cases no matter how hard we try, and instead try to focus on the ones that would provide for the best debates, weighing things like diversity or relevance of education against things like advantage and impact areas and diversity.

Let’s face it: all of the cases that are being considered for inclusion currently are “landmark” cases. In order for an affirmative to have an advantage in an areas topic, they would likely have to overrule a “landmark” case. I don’t think that using “landmark” as a limiting term would be effective, and I worry that it might be used at the expense of other, more effective limiting terms (such as “overrule a decision holding an act of congress constitutional in one or more of the following areas” or “overrule a decision holding an action by state actors constitutional in one or more of the following areas” or “overrule a decision restricting one or more of the following” etc).

I did the same google search for “landmark supreme court decisions”, and the second hit lists 41 cases that are “landmark.” The third hit lists hundreds of cases. “Landmark” CANNOT BE A LIMITING TERM FOR AN AREAS TOPIC because I’m not convinced that it would actually limit the topic at all. Even if there were good topicality debates about what “landmark” means, how does one then establish that a case is or is not a landmark? “Landmark” seems as though it would be simply unnecessary in a topic that lists cases, because it will be pre-determined that those cases will be “landmark” cases.

I also think that the really huge cases are all expansions of rights or federal power. It seemed like earlier on the topic blog there was a general consensus that the areas/cases should be “liberal-leaning” or favor the aff. Most of the “landmark” decisions have been whittled away slowly, so a complete overturn might not be so unique (and I obviously don’t buy Ede’s argument that lesser cases wouldn’t have sent the same signal – I think it would be almost impossible to find evidence that is comparative in the way that it would need to be to distinguish between the 15 exceptions to the exclusionary rule and a full out reversal of Mapp). This just runs entirely counter to the earlier discussion of a narrow topic that helps the aff out (like Ross’ post way earlier on the blog about why an aff bias in the resolution is best). Overturning “landmark” decisions in this sense would guarantee all those pics and ks would kick my ass every round. I think the resolution needs to be worded in such a way that the affirmative has to overturn a decision in which the Court found something to be constitutional that should not be – whether it’s a restriction on free speech, or an exception to the exclusionary rule, or a use of eminent domain, or whatever, and I thought that many of the people who spoke earlier on the blog felt the same.

From http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forum/forumnew88.php

“Landmark precedents are seldom overruled. This is especially true with precedents affirming constitutional rights. Even so, the reactionary wings of the Burger and Rehnquist Courts have chipped steadily away at the edifice of constitutional rights, particularly in the criminal justice area. The hope is that in time the edifice will crumble. Indeed, right now at least 15 exceptions to Mapp and another 15 or more to Miranda already exist. According to University of Michigan law professor Yale Kamisar (the foremost authority in the area): “Today, Miranda is so riddled with exceptions and qualifications that Earl Warren, its author, would hardly recognize it.””