Lawnix - Free Case Briefs

Lawnix offers free case briefs covering a number of subjects included in law school curricula. Topics include constitutional law, contracts, civil procedure, torts, property, and criminal law. We hope you will find this information useful whether you are a law student encountering these cases for the first time, a practicing lawyer in need of a quick refresher, or if you are considering law school or a legal career. Your feedback is always welcome. Please let us know by email if you spot an error or would like to offer suggestions.

Excerpts from Recent Articles:

Fiallo v. Bell – Case Brief:

Congress was specifically concerned with clarifying the previous law so that the illegitimate child in relation to his mother would have the same status as a legitimate child. The legislative history of those provisions reflects an intentional choice by Congress not to extend preferential immigration status by virtue of the relationship between an illegitimate child and his natural father. [...]

Galvan v. Press – Case Brief:

The power of Congress over the rights of aliens to enter and remain in the United States is not subject to the limitations of substantive due process. The Ex Post Facto Clause does not apply to deportation. The Act is constitutional as here applied to a resident alien shown to have been willingly a member of the Communist Party, although not shown to have been aware of advocacy of violent overthrow of the Government. It is enough that Galvan joined the Communist Party, aware that it was a distinct and active political organization, and that he did so of his own free will. [...]

Gibbons v. Ogden – Case Brief:

A state may not legislation inconsistent with federal law which regulates a purely internal affair regarding trade or the police power, or is pursuant to a power to regulate interstate commerce concurrent with that of Congress. States do not have the power to regulate those phases of interstate commerce which, because of the need of national uniformity, demand that their regulation, be prescribed by a single authority. A state does not have the power to grant an exclusive right to the use of state navigable waters inconsistent with federal law. [...]

Nixon v. Administrator of General Services – Case Brief – Nixon Tapes:

Congress has the power to pass an act directing the seizure and disposition, within the control of the Executive Branch, of the papers and tapes of a former president. The Executive Branch became a party to the Act’s regulation when President Ford signed the Act into law and the Solicitor General under the Carter administration urged affirmance of the District Court’s judgment. Moreover, the function remains in the Executive Branch in that the Administrator of General Services and the archivists are employees of that branch. Lawrence v. Texas

Longshoremen’s Union v. Boyd – Case Brief:

A party may not seek a declaratory judgment regarding a statute if no sanctions have been sought under the statute and no occasion for doing so has arisen. The Longshoremen’s Union in effect asked the District Court to rule that a statute would not be applied to them under certain circumstances in the future, when no sanctions had been sought against union members and there was no occasion for doing so. Epperson v. Arkansas

Missouri v. Holland – Case Brief:

Congress has the power to give effect to a treaty authorized under the Executive’s treaty power (Article II Section 2) through legislation, even if that legislation standing alone would be an unconstitutional interference with States’ rights under the Tenth Amendment. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act is valid under Article I Section 8 of the Constitution as a necessary and proper means of effectuating the treaty. The treaty and statute do not infringe property rights or sovereign powers respecting such birds reserved to the States by the Tenth Amendment. McCulloch v. Maryland [...]

Whitney v. California – Case Brief:

In determining whether a state law restricting free speech is a valid exercise of the police power, the law may not be declared unconstitutional unless it is an arbitrary or unreasonable attempt to exercise the authority vested in the State in the public interest. Every presumption is to be indulged in favor of the validity of the statute. A law that penalizes those who advocate violence as a means of changing industrial and political conditions, but does not penalize the use of violence to maintain such conditions, is not an unconstitutional violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Baker v. Carr [...]

H. P. Hood & Sons, Inc. v. Du Mond – Case Brief:

A restriction imposed under state law is invalid in light of the Commerce Clause if its statutory purpose and practical effect would be to curtail the volume of interstate commerce for the benefit of local economic interests. There is a distinction deeply rooted in our history and law between the power of the States to shelter the people from menaces to their health or safety, and the States’ lack of power to burden interstate commerce for their own economic advantage. NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp.