Most overrated Supreme Court rulings of all time

[A18]

What are the most overrated Supreme Court rulings, in terms of importance?

Marbury v. Madison -- did not establish judicial review, and Marshall's defenses of it sucked anyway
Brown v. Board of Education -- look at how little desegregation occured until Congress banned segregation by statute
West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish -- See Barry Cushman, Rethinking the New Deal Court

[J. J.]

I'd be tempted to say Brown.  IIRC, the Court had ruled segregation illegal in terms of interstate transit prior to this, so there was case law out there in support of the concept.

[dazzleman]

I agree Brown was the correct ruling, but its impact has been seriously overrated.

There is about the same degree of racial separation in schools today as there was in 1954.  It has simply changed from top-down segregation imposed by law to bottom-up racial separation that is the result of millions of individual decisions.

The manner in which the decision was implemented, particularly in the northern states in the 1970s, had the effect of deepening and entrenching racial separation in the schools, rather than ending it.

I think people expected too much from a court decision in this case, even though I think the ruling was the correct one.

[© tweed]

I agree Brown was the correct ruling, but its impact has been seriously overrated.

There is about the same degree of racial separation in schools today as there was in 1954.  It has simply changed from top-down segregation imposed by law to bottom-up racial separation that is the result of millions of individual decisions.

The manner in which the decision was implemented, particularly in the northern states in the 1970s, had the effect of deepening and entrenching racial separation in the schools, rather than ending it.

I think people expected too much from a court decision in this case, even though I think the ruling was the correct one.

segregationist but I love you

[dazzleman]

I agree Brown was the correct ruling, but its impact has been seriously overrated.

There is about the same degree of racial separation in schools today as there was in 1954.  It has simply changed from top-down segregation imposed by law to bottom-up racial separation that is the result of millions of individual decisions.

The manner in which the decision was implemented, particularly in the northern states in the 1970s, had the effect of deepening and entrenching racial separation in the schools, rather than ending it.

I think people expected too much from a court decision in this case, even though I think the ruling was the correct one.

segregationist but I love you

No, I'm simply a realist.  As I said, I support the decision.  But such a decision can't really undo racial separation, when there are so many stronger things holding it in place.

[J. J.]

Actually the "Second Coleman Report," indicated that this was a problem. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Coleman_%28sociologist%29

I'm looking at this more as a legal matter than social impact.  My argument that Brown is overrated is that there were precedents running in that direction in the 1940's.  It was an achievement, but it stood on the backs of other achievements and more marked the end of a gradual erosion Plessy v. Ferguson than a sudden new direction for the Court.  And what wasn't accomplished by it, had to be accomplished by legislation.

[A18]

Brown was right, but its impact was more limited than is readily admitted.

[Emsworth]

Marbury v. Madison is perhaps the most overrated of all Supreme Court rulings. It is commonly assumed that the doctrine of judicial review was highly uncertain until Marshall firmly established its place in American law. However, nothing could be further from the truth: judicial review was already quite well-accepted. The Federalist Papers, for example, explicitly stated that the judiciary would be able to strike down unconstitutional acts of Congress. Marbury wasn't even the first case in which the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of a federal statute; seven years earlier, in Hylton v. United States), it reviewed the validity of a law imposing a tax on carriages. Even though the law was ultimately upheld, Hylton at least established that the courts were entitled to judge the constitutionality of any enactment.

[memphis]

There is about the same degree of racial separation in schools today as there was in 1954. 

Bull! My high school (late 1990s) was very evenly split black/white. While not typical, this would not have happenned in Memphis in 1954. Just because Brown has not made our schools shining examples of racial integration does not mean it has had no effect.

[mianfei]

Brown was right, but its impact was more limited than is readily admitted.

I would agree, and turn to two highly “underrated” decisions, which I am sure even many law students in my Australian homeland do not know:

• Corrigan v. Buckley (1926): officially allowed private owners of housing to discriminate on race by stating that racially restrictive covenants were legal. Corrigan has de facto overruled much better-known decisions like Buchanan v. Warley and Shelley v. Kramer and contributed to the extreme racial segregation of American cities to this day and the difficulty of enforcing decisions like Brown
• Smith v. Allwright (1944) – much better-known than Corrigan, but much more central to the Civil Rights movement than Brown. By declaring the white primary unconstitutional, Smith allowed the first significant black voter registration in the former Confederacy since disenfranchisement half a century previously.

Smith even had effects on black registration in Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee where there were no statewide white primaries because of significant Republican opposition. Black voter registration in Confederate states increased by one order of magnitude in the decade following Smith, and would be critical to Democrats carrying several states in 1960 and 1964. Compared to Brown, Smith had a much greater impact regardless of its failure in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana outside Acadiana and many other rural areas.

[Ancestral Republican]

Obergefell v. Hodges

Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion was in particularly legalistically simplistic and full of holes. It opened up same-sex marriage to dispute down the road, which may very well happen soon.

[MarkD]

Roe v. Wade, of course.

The Court's opinion was not an interpretation of the Constitution at all. The premise that the Court invoked as controlling the decision is not in the Constitution at all. Of all the precedents that the Court invoked as authorizing their decision, the only ones that were actually pertinent were Skinner v. Oklahoma and Griswold v. Connecticut. Both of those precedents were written by Justice William O. Douglas, and in both of them, Douglas was inventing new law. The premises that Douglas invoked as controlling those decisions were also not in the Constitution at all. Skinner, Griswold, and Roe were all examples of justices legislating from the bench.

[Common Sense Atlantan]

All of them

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Kelo v. New London

Overrated in its badness. Now to clarify the actions of the city of New London were utterly reprehensible and should not be legal under any sane implementation of eminent domain. And that's now the case in most places because 40+ states tightened laws on eminent domain after the ruling.

The liberal justices and Kennedy were called out for this when in fact their decision was basically "you may not like this but that's what the law allows, if you don't like it then go change the law." And that's exactly what most states then did! In doing so they weren't flipping the middle finger to the justices and the decision, they were actually going in actions consistent with the spirit if the decision.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

I will meme a bit and say Dred Scott: even worse than the average person thinks! The court itself ruled that the plaintiff had no standing, yet rather than dismissing the case it cynically spent hundreds of pages on what should have been obiter dicta to constitutionally mandate slavery and white supremacy. The cynicism is breathtaking.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Roe due to fact it's incumbent on the male to use protection, not the female and nowadays we have birth control unlike before

Biden, Feinstein are right, we must solve the Covid crisis before making any adjustments in Crt packing, the public can vote out D's in 2022, just as fast as the did the Rs

Covid isn't going away, Korea baseball has adjusted to wearing masks indefinitely

[HisGrace]

I will meme a bit and say Dred Scott: even worse than the average person thinks! The court itself ruled that the plaintiff had no standing, yet rather than dismissing the case it cynically spent hundreds of pages on what should have been obiter dicta to constitutionally mandate slavery and white supremacy. The cynicism is breathtaking.

If they'd simply said that because Dred Scott originally filed the case in Missouri they couldn't hear the case since he had no legal standing there that would have been a debatable position legally at the time. Striking down the Missouri Compromise and applying the due process clause and 5th Amendment to slaves in non-slave territories was pure judicial activism that had nothing to do with the case itself. Taney was such an asshole.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Schenck is overrated by people who don't know it very well but just know the phrases "fire in a crowded theater" and "clear and present danger" and assume it is controlling doctrine on free speech.

[Wazza [INACTIVE]]

You don’t have to bump a 14 year old thread to have this discussion mr no avatar.

[HisGrace]

You don’t have to bump a 14 year old thread to have this discussion mr no avatar.

LOL, didn't notice this was so old.

[lfromnj]

Schenck is overrated by people who don't know it very well but just know the phrases "fire in a crowded theater" and "clear and present danger" and assume it is controlling doctrine on free speech.

Also people forget to mention it has been largely overruled Brandenburg v Ohio.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Not to go full Clarence Thomas, but a lot of the Gilded Age cases that neutered the Fourteenth Amendment for decades are overrated given the SCOTUS's bizarre insistence on continuing to pretend that they're controlling precedent.