Featured Case Briefs

Congress cannot delegate unbounded lawmaking discretion to the President or industry groups without defined legislative standards, and the commerce power does not reach intrastate business whose effect on interstate commerce is only indirect. The National Industrial Recovery Act's code-making scheme failed on both grounds.

Absent clear and convincing evidence of congressional intent to the contrary, final agency regulations may be challenged before enforcement under the Administrative Procedure Act and Declaratory Judgment Act. The challenge is ripe when the issue is purely legal and the regulation forces an immediate, significant change in conduct under threat of serious penalties.

A conviction under the Espionage Act for publishing leaflets that urge a general strike in munitions factories during war is sustained if competent evidence supports it, and the First Amendment does not shield such advocacy. Foreseeable effects of publications aimed at obstructing the war effort establish the required intent, even if the defendants' primary motive was aiding revolution in Russia.

The law of the place where an injury is received determines whether a cause of action exists, so an Alabama employee injured in Mississippi cannot recover where Mississippi law gives no remedy. Alabama's Employer's Liability Act does not follow the parties across state lines, even though the contract was made and the negligence occurred in Alabama.

A listing under the Endangered Species Act stands even if the Service fails to designate critical habitat on time, because delisting a near-extinct species is not an appropriate remedy for a missed habitat deadline. Agencies may rely on reasonable expert judgment when science is contested, and Congress may protect purely intrastate endangered species as part of a comprehensive commercial regulatory scheme.

A promise to pay extra compensation for performing a duty one is already contractually bound to perform lacks consideration and is unenforceable. Threatening to breach to extract more pay does not create a valid modification.

The Board's "good-faith reasonable doubt" standard for employer polls is facially valid, but the Board must actually apply the standard it announces and cannot disregard probative circumstantial evidence. Because Allentown presented evidence sufficient to create a reasonable uncertainty about majority support, the Board's contrary finding lacked substantial evidence.

A state may constitutionally apply its own substantive law to a dispute if it has a significant contact or significant aggregation of contacts, creating state interests, with the parties and the occurrence, so that the choice is neither arbitrary nor fundamentally unfair. The forum need not be the place of the accident or contract, and a nonresident's employment in the forum, the insurer's presence there, and the plaintiff's bona fide residence there can together suffice.

A bulk e-mail advertiser is not entitled to summary judgment liability against it merely because its contract e-mailers violated computer crime and trespass laws; the plaintiff must also prove causation of CFAA damage and that the e-mailers acted as the advertiser's agents. Virginia's 'without authority' definition expressly reaches UBE sent in violation of an e-mail provider's policies.

The Sherman Act does not apply to acts done abroad by a domestic corporation that were lawful under the law of the place where they were committed, because legislation is presumed territorial. A person also cannot be liable in tort for persuading a foreign sovereign to act where the sovereign's own conduct makes the result lawful.

Because Congress delegated to the EPA the decision whether and how to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants, that delegation displaces the federal common law nuisance claim seeking to abate those emissions, even before the EPA actually sets standards. The Clean Air Act and the EPA's authority over carbon dioxide emissions from power plants therefore foreclose judicial emissions caps under federal common law.

Longstanding religiously expressive monuments carry a strong presumption of constitutionality, and a cross used as a century-old World War I memorial does not violate the Establishment Clause. Many people would not view removing or altering such a monument as a neutral act.

EPA's authority over solid waste under RCRA is limited to materials actually discarded, meaning disposed of, abandoned, or thrown away. Materials reused within an industry's ongoing production process are not 'discarded' and fall outside the agency's jurisdiction.

EPA may police the line between legitimate and sham recycling, but its rules must rest on a reasoned, record-supported link between the regulatory trigger and actual discard. Requirements such as Factor 4's 'comparable to or lower than' test and the Verified Recycler Exclusion's variance mandate fail when EPA offers no rational basis connecting them to the risk that materials are being discarded.

OSHA must set toxic-substance standards at the most protective level that is technologically and economically feasible, without weighing costs against benefits. Agency action must also rest on a stated, health-related rationale supported by substantial evidence, so the wage guarantee fell.

Aesthetic design review ordinances must contain clear, workable standards; terms like compatible, harmonious, and interesting, with no objective criteria, are unconstitutionally vague and permit arbitrary, ad hoc enforcement. Appeal procedures cannot save an ordinance that gives neither applicants nor reviewing bodies ascertainable standards.

A court deciding summary judgment in a New York Times libel case must apply the clear-and-convincing evidence standard in asking whether a genuine issue of actual malice exists. The question is whether a reasonable jury could find actual malice with convincing clarity.

Business records voluntarily created by a person may be seized under a valid, particular warrant and admitted at trial without violating the Fifth Amendment, because the privilege protects against compelled testimony or production, not against lawful seizure by officers. Catch-all language in a warrant is read in context to limit it to evidence of the specific crime under investigation.

The Fish and Wildlife Service may impose Incidental Take Statement conditions on lawful land use only where the record gives it a rational basis to conclude that a take of a listed species will occur, and those conditions must be clear enough to permit compliance. Section 7 and Section 9 use one definition of "take," so speculation that a species could be harmed is not enough.

A trial judge's mistrial ruling based on possible jury bias from improper argument by counsel is entitled to the highest degree of respect on review, and a retrial after such a mistrial is not barred by the Double Jeopardy Clause. An express finding of manifest necessity is not constitutionally required where the record shows the judge acted responsibly and deliberately.

The EPA may require an upstream point source's NPDES permit to comply with a downstream State's water quality standards, and its reasonable determination that a discharge causes no actually detectable violation of those standards must be upheld on deferential judicial review. Courts may not impose a categorical ban on discharges into already degraded waters that the Clean Water Act does not contain.

A foreign defendant cannot be subjected to state jurisdiction where, considering the severe burden of litigating abroad and the slight interests of the plaintiff and forum, jurisdiction would offend fair play and substantial justice. The Justices split on whether mere awareness that a product will reach the forum through the stream of commerce establishes minimum contacts.

A rental manager's refusal to provide a black applicant the information and opportunity to inspect or negotiate that white inquirers received supports a finding of intentional racial discrimination under Sec. 1982 and the FHA. An owner who sets discriminatory-in-effect policies with callous indifference, or ratifies his agent's conduct, faces punitive liability.

Congress cannot ban sexually explicit images that appear to depict minors but are produced without real children, because such speech is neither obscene nor child pornography under Ferber and cannot be suppressed merely because it might encourage or facilitate crime. Protected speech may not be banned as a means of suppressing unprotected speech.

A complaint must plead specific facts, not conclusions, plausibly showing that each high-ranking official personally acted with discriminatory purpose, and Twombly's plausibility standard governs all civil actions. Because Bivens liability cannot rest on respondeat superior or mere knowledge of subordinates' conduct, conclusory allegations of discriminatory intent are insufficient to survive dismissal.

A supplier's threat to stop delivering goods unless the price is raised constitutes economic duress when the buyer cannot obtain the goods elsewhere in time and an action for breach would be inadequate, and the buyer may then recover the coerced price increase. Duress is shown as a matter of law where the buyer faces genuine commitments, penalties, and lost business, and has reasonably exhausted alternative sources.

A state may not impose an income tax that falls exclusively on nonresidents' in-state earnings while exempting residents, and the Privileges and Immunities Clause requires substantial equality of treatment. The discrimination is not cured by the nonresident's home-state tax credit or by the possibility of retaliation through that state's legislation.

Public entities can be liable under the Tort Claims Act for toxic contamination, but only for objectively compensable losses: quality-of-life damages from loss of use of property and the cost of medically necessary surveillance. Emotional distress and unquantified enhanced risk of disease are not recoverable.

A person who provokes a victim and then uses unwitting third parties such as police to bring about the victim's death is a principal in the first degree, even if absent from the scene. Reasonably foreseeable responses by the victim or the police do not break the causal chain, so the instigator can be convicted of involuntary manslaughter.

A federal court may hear an equal protection challenge to a state legislative apportionment. Such a claim is justiciable and is not a nonjusticiable political question merely because it concerns the allocation of political power within a State.

A State's judgment binds the parties and privies as to claims and issues it decided, but its enforcement mechanisms do not travel to other States, and it cannot control another State's courts, in suits by strangers to the original litigation, on what evidence or witnesses they may hear. A Michigan consent injunction therefore could not bar a witness from testifying in a Missouri wrongful-death trial.

A state criminal jury of fewer than six members violates the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments, because the empirical evidence shows that reducing jury size below six seriously impairs deliberation, reliability, and community representation without meaningful state savings. This reasoning is from Justice Blackmun's plurality opinion, joined by Justice Stevens, with Justices Brennan, Stewart, and Marshall joining on the point that juries need more than five members; other Justices concurred only in the judgment.

A Sherman Act Section 1 complaint based on parallel conduct must plead enough facts to make an agreement plausible, not merely conceivable, to survive a motion to dismiss. Labels, conclusions, and bare assertions of conspiracy are insufficient, and Conley's 'no set of facts' language is retired.

Warrantless breath tests are permissible searches incident to a lawful drunk-driving arrest, so states may criminalize refusing them, while warrantless blood tests are not, so criminal refusal penalties for blood tests are unconstitutional. The difference turns on the minimal intrusion of breath tests versus the significant bodily intrusion of blood draws.

A court of equity may decline to enjoin a nuisance absolutely and instead condition the injunction on the defendant's payment of permanent damages when the harm is small relative to the cost of abatement and a shutdown would be drastic. Such payment compensates for a servitude on the plaintiffs' land and ends the private litigation.

Congress cannot retain a role in removing an officer who executes the laws except through impeachment, and an officer removable by Congress cannot be given executive powers. The Comptroller General's removability by joint resolution made his role under the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act unconstitutional.

Government may punish advocacy of force or law violation only when it is directed to inciting imminent lawless action and is likely to produce such action. Statutes punishing mere abstract advocacy or assembly to advocate violence violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

State-imposed racial segregation in public schools violates the Equal Protection Clause because separate educational facilities are inherently unequal, regardless of equality in tangible factors. The separate but equal doctrine has no place in public education.

A nonresident who deliberately enters a long-term, continuing relationship with a forum-based company may be sued in that forum without ever physically entering it, because purposeful availment, not physical presence, satisfies due process. Contract terms, negotiations, and course of dealing together determine whether minimum contacts exist.

Personal service of process on a nonresident voluntarily present in the forum state is sufficient to confer personal jurisdiction under the Due Process Clause, even if the visit is brief and the claim is unrelated to the forum. Transient jurisdiction survives International Shoe and Shaffer.

A physician must reasonably disclose the material risks, alternatives, and consequences of proposed treatment, and the adequacy of disclosure is judged by the patient's informational needs under a legal reasonableness standard, not by what the medical profession customarily discloses. The right of self-determination, not medical custom, defines the physician's duty.

An advertisement containing a definite promise, showing an intention to be bound, is a unilateral offer to the world at large that ripens into an enforceable contract with anyone who performs its stated conditions, without any need to notify acceptance beforehand. Inconvenience suffered at the promisor's request, and commercial benefit to the promisor, supply sufficient consideration.

A party moving for summary judgment on an issue where the opponent bears the burden of proof at trial need not submit evidence negating the opponent's claim; it may succeed by pointing out the absence of evidence supporting an essential element. Summary judgment must be entered against a party who, after adequate discovery, fails to make a showing sufficient to establish an essential element of its case.

Fighting words, those that by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace, fall outside First Amendment protection, and a state may punish them under a narrowly drawn statute. Face-to-face epithets likely to provoke the average person to violence have too little social value to outweigh the interest in public order.

A government may not target a religious practice for distinctive treatment. Laws that are not neutral or not generally applicable, because they pursue secular goals only against religiously motivated conduct, must survive strict scrutiny and almost never will.

Pennsylvania courts may punish as a common law misdemeanor conduct that injures or potentially injures public morality, even absent a statute or exact precedent. Persistent obscene telephone calls to a stranger, accompanied by lewd and sodomitical suggestions, fall within that category.

The scope of an easement created by a clear conveyance is fixed by its terms, and 'full right of use' cannot be judicially narrowed; the easement passes to successors of subdivided parcels but remains limited to the road's 1938 width and to uses that do not unduly burden the servient estate. Whether a future subdivision unreasonably burdens the servient estate is a fact question that cannot be declared in advance.

Signed and unsigned writings may be read together to satisfy the statute of frauds if they clearly refer to the same subject matter or transaction, and parol evidence may connect them and show assent. A cryptic but meaningful notation such as "2 years to make good" can supply the contract's duration.

A corporation is subject to general jurisdiction only where it is essentially at home, paradigmatically its place of incorporation and principal place of business, not wherever it has substantial, continuous business activity. A foreign parent cannot be sued on foreign-rooted claims in a State merely because its subsidiary does significant business there.

An offer can be revoked at any time before acceptance, even if the offeror promised to keep it open, unless the promise is supported by consideration. Revocation need not be communicated directly: if the offeree learns from any source that the offeror has sold the property to another, the offer is terminated and cannot be accepted.

A bystander who suffers physical injury from shock at contemporaneously witnessing negligently caused injury to a close relative may recover without being in the zone of danger, because duty depends on foreseeability, not artificial location rules. The court sets foreseeability guidelines of proximity to the scene, direct sensory observance, and closeness of relationship.

The Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause guarantees a state criminal defendant the right to a jury trial in any case that would fall within the Sixth Amendment's jury guarantee in federal court. A crime punishable by two years' imprisonment is a serious crime, not a petty offense, so a jury trial cannot be denied.

A will that devises land on conditions barring sale or encumbrance, with forfeiture to the devisee's children if violated, is construed as a life estate with remainder when that reading carries out the testator's intent to shield the land from the devisee's creditors. Conditional limitations on life estates are valid, whereas such restraints on a fee simple would be void.

Federal courts sitting in diversity must apply the substantive law of the State, whether declared by its legislature or its highest court, because there is no federal general common law. Swift v. Tyson's contrary doctrine was an unconstitutional intrusion on rights reserved to the States.

Where a bottled beverage explodes after delivery, a plaintiff who shows the bottle was not mishandled or altered after leaving the bottler's control may rely on res ipsa loquitur to raise an inference of negligence, without proving a specific negligent act. Justice Traynor's concurrence urged going further and imposing strict liability on manufacturers for defective products.

States may impose severe recidivist sentences, including 25 years to life for a triggering felony like grand theft, without violating the Eighth Amendment's narrow proportionality principle, because courts defer to legislative public-safety judgments. A sentence is unconstitutional only in the rare case where the crime and punishment, viewed in light of the offender's entire criminal history, are grossly disproportionate.

Second degree felony murder is a cognizable offense in Maryland, and a death caused by child abuse that is dangerous to life as inflicted supports a murder conviction on that doctrine.

A landowner has no legal right to the free flow of light and air across a neighbor's land absent an easement, statute, or contract, so a useful structure that casts shadows cannot be enjoined, even if partly motivated by spite. Restrictions on shading neighbors must come from legislation such as zoning, not judicial creation.

A party asserting a narrower meaning of an ambiguous contract term bears the burden of proving that meaning, and failing to prove it defeats the claim. Contract interpretation turns on objective meanings, so a party's unexpressed subjective intent is not enough.

Where the Legislature deliberately omits a mental-state element from a statutory rape provision, the offense is strict liability and a defendant's reasonable belief that the minor was of age is no defense. Creating a mistake-of-age defense or a mens rea requirement is a task for the Legislature, not the courts.

Battery requires intent, which is established where the actor acts with knowledge that harmful contact is substantially certain to result, even absent any desire to harm; this standard applies equally to children, whose age matters only to what they knew.

A woman who merely consents to being transported under the Mann Act does not commit the substantive offense and cannot be convicted of conspiring to violate it. Because the Mann Act necessarily contemplates the woman's consent but does not punish it, the Court found a legislative policy of leaving her acquiescence unpunished, and the general conspiracy statute cannot be used to punish it.

Congress's power to regulate commerce includes navigation and reaches interstate commerce within a state's own waters, so a state-granted steamboat monopoly cannot override a vessel's federal coasting license. State laws that conflict with valid federal law yield under the Supremacy Clause.

The Sixth Amendment right to appointed counsel is a fundamental right, made binding on the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, so indigent defendants charged with felonies in state court must be given a lawyer. Betts v. Brady's case-by-case approach is overruled.

A corporation is subject to general, all-purpose jurisdiction only where it is essentially at home, and merely placing products in the stream of commerce that reach the forum does not make it so. The stream-of-commerce theory bears on specific jurisdiction, not general jurisdiction.

A manufacturer is strictly liable in tort for injuries caused by a defect in a product it places on the market, regardless of warranty rules or privity. An injured consumer need only prove he was hurt using the product as intended because of a defect he was unaware of.

A manufacturer that consciously disregards the probability of serious injury by marketing a mass-produced product with a known, cheaply fixable design defect acts with malice and may be liable for substantial punitive damages. The court also reaffirmed that heirs in a wrongful death action cannot recover punitive damages.

A donor may make a valid inter vivos gift of title to a chattel while reserving a life estate, because delivery of written gift instruments suffices and immediate possession by the donee is not required. The gift is effective as a present transfer of a remainder interest even though enjoyment is postponed until the donor's death.

Damages for breach of contract are limited to losses arising naturally from the breach or reasonably within both parties' contemplation at the time of contracting, so special losses such as a stopped mill's lost profits are recoverable only if the special circumstances were communicated to the breaching party. This foreseeability rule allocates risk by letting parties who know of unusual exposure price or limit it.

Giving up a legal right at the promisor's request is valid consideration, even if the forbearance actually benefits the promisee, and courts will not inquire into the adequacy or actual benefit of the bargained-for exchange. A promisor's later written acknowledgment that holds money for the promisee can also create a trust that defeats a limitations defense.

Congress cannot use its Commerce Clause power to prohibit interstate shipment of harmless goods in order to regulate local production conditions such as child labor, because production is local and reserved to the States. The commerce power regulates interstate transportation and does not authorize control over matters left to state police power.

When a Federal Rule of Civil Procedure directly governs a point in dispute and is valid under the Rules Enabling Act and the Constitution, it controls in diversity cases even if a conflicting state rule exists. The Erie outcome-determination analysis applies only where no Federal Rule covers the issue.

A state court cannot exercise jurisdiction over a nonresident defendant without purposeful contacts by that defendant with the forum, and a settlor's or beneficiaries' ties to the forum do not supply them. A judgment entered without jurisdiction is void and is not entitled to full faith and credit in sister states.

A physician's explicit guarantee of a specific result can be an enforceable warranty if a jury finds it was intended and accepted as a promise, and breach is remedied by expectation damages (the difference between the promised and actual result), not by compensation for pain and suffering. The pain of the operation is part of the consideration the patient gave, not a measure of loss.

A corporation's principal place of business for diversity jurisdiction is its 'nerve center,' the place where its high-level officers direct, control, and coordinate its activities, normally its corporate headquarters. This simple, uniform rule replaces complex State-by-State business-activity tests.

Wisconsin recognizes promissory estoppel under Section 90 of the Restatement, allowing recovery where a promise that the promisor should expect to induce reliance does induce definite and substantial detrimental reliance, even without a complete, enforceable contract. Damages are limited to what is necessary to prevent injustice, typically reliance losses rather than lost profits.

Successive good-faith purchasers who occupy land contiguous to the tract described in their deeds may tack their periods of possession to establish adverse possession, because privity is a reasonable connection between occupants rather than a technical deed requirement. Seasonal use of a summer home also satisfies the continuity requirement.

Public figures cannot recover for intentional infliction of emotional distress based on a parody or similar publication unless it contains a false statement of fact made with actual malice. Offensive, outrageous, or intentionally injurious satire about public figures is protected by the First Amendment.

A single House of Congress cannot exercise binding legislative power on its own: any action that alters legal rights and duties outside the Legislative Branch must pass both Houses and be presented to the President. The one-House veto is therefore unconstitutional, regardless of its convenience or historical use.

A state may exercise personal jurisdiction over an out-of-state defendant who has minimum contacts with the forum such that suit does not offend traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice. Physical presence is no longer required, and systematic, continuous activity that gives rise to the claim suffices.

Under the four-Justice plurality opinion, a foreign manufacturer is generally subject to a State's jurisdiction only if it purposefully targeted that State, not merely the United States as a whole or by placing goods in a national stream of commerce. Predicting that a product may reach a forum is insufficient without conduct directed at that State. Justices Breyer and Alito did not adopt this strict rule and concurred only in the judgment.

A contractor whose deviation from specifications is innocent and trivial has substantially performed and may recover the contract price less damages. Where cost of correction is grossly disproportionate to the good attained, damages are measured by the difference in value rather than the cost of replacement.

A landlord's no-pets policy does not categorically defeat a disabled tenant's claim that keeping non-service animals is a reasonable accommodation under the Fair Housing Act. Whether the accommodation is reasonable is a fact-intensive question that cannot be resolved without discovery on the burdens and benefits involved.

Title to land in the United States derives from the discovering sovereign and its successors, so Indian tribes could not convey absolute title to private individuals. Only the government may extinguish the Indian right of occupancy and grant the soil, and courts of the United States will not recognize private purchases from Indians.

A property owner may not use deadly mechanical devices such as spring guns to protect unoccupied property against trespassers or thieves, because human life and safety outweigh property interests. An owner cannot do indirectly through a trap what he could not lawfully do directly in person.

A city's use of eminent domain to transfer private property to private developers as part of a comprehensive economic development plan satisfies the Fifth Amendment's public use requirement, because public use means public purpose and courts defer to legislative judgments about it. The takings were valid even though the properties were not blighted and the property would be turned over to private parties.

A promise to confer a gift is unenforceable for lack of consideration, even if the promisee incurs loss or inconvenience in relying on it. The majority treated the promise as a mere gratuity.

Racial classifications by government receive the most rigid scrutiny, but the Court held that wartime military necessity justified excluding all persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast, deferring to military and congressional judgment about the danger of espionage and sabotage.

The Due Process Clause protects the liberty of adults to engage in private, consensual intimate sexual conduct, so states cannot criminalize it merely on moral disapproval. Bowers v. Hardwick was wrongly decided and is overruled.

A newspaper advertisement that is clear, definite, and explicit, and leaves nothing open for negotiation, is a binding offer that a customer accepts by complying with its terms. The advertiser cannot impose new or arbitrary conditions after acceptance.

An advertisement is ordinarily an invitation to negotiate, not an offer, and a commercial evidently made in jest creates no power of acceptance that a consumer can invoke. Promising a fighter jet for a few hundred thousand dollars' worth of soft-drink points, in a plainly humorous ad, formed no contract.

A private shopping center that does not perform municipal functions is not a state actor, and its owner may bar handbilling unrelated to the center's business where speakers have adequate alternative avenues of communication on surrounding public streets and sidewalks. Inviting the public to shop does not dedicate the property to general public speech use.

The Fourteenth Amendment protects liberty of contract, and a state may restrict it under the police power only through laws with a real and direct relation to public health, safety, or morals. A maximum-hours law for bakers lacked that relation and was an invalid, arbitrary interference.

A communication that merely explores interest and signals the sender may sell to another buyer is a preliminary negotiation, not an offer, so no contract arises from the recipient's purported acceptance. Where the recipient knows or has reason to know further assent from the sender is required, no offer exists.

A suit arises under federal law for jurisdictional purposes only when the plaintiff's own cause of action rests on federal law, not when federal questions arise through an anticipated defense. This is the foundation of the well-pleaded complaint rule.

Laws restricting marriage on the basis of racial classifications violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. Equal punishment of both races does not cure the invidious discrimination, and the freedom to marry belongs to the individual.

A party is bound by the reasonable meaning of his words and acts, not his secret intentions, so a signed agreement made in undisclosed jest is still an enforceable contract when the other party reasonably believed it was serious. Courts will order specific performance of such a contract absent fraud, unfairness, or other inequity.

Plaintiffs must show a concrete, particularized, actual or imminent injury to themselves to have Article III standing; vague some-day intentions to revisit a site and a statutory citizen-suit right to procedural compliance do not suffice. Congress cannot convert the public's generalized interest in executive observance of the law into an individual right enforceable by any citizen.

A plaintiff seeking APA review must challenge a specific, identifiable final agency action and, at summary judgment, support its injury claim with specific facts rather than general averments of use of land 'in the vicinity.' Broad 'programs' consisting of many individual actions cannot be attacked wholesale in court.

A manufacturer of a finished product that is dangerous if negligently made owes a duty of care to foreseeable users, not just the immediate purchaser, regardless of privity of contract. This abolished privity as a bar to negligence suits against manufacturers of products that probably endanger life and limb when defective.

Courts have the power and duty to declare acts of Congress that conflict with the Constitution void, because the Constitution is paramount law and it is the judiciary's province to say what the law is. This established judicial review, even as the Court denied Marbury relief for lack of jurisdiction.

Unexcused violation of a safety statute is negligence in itself, and a jury may not treat it as optional or merely probative of carelessness. The violation defeats recovery only if it is causally connected to the injury, but where it is shown, it is prima facie evidence of contributory negligence.

Nonmarital partners may enforce express agreements, and in their absence may pursue implied contract, partnership, trust, or quantum meruit remedies, because they have the same rights as any other unmarried persons. Only agreements explicitly and inseparably based on meretricious sexual services are unenforceable.

A sovereign State suffering concrete injury from climate change has standing to challenge EPA's refusal to regulate, and greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act's broad definition. EPA must base any decision not to regulate on the statutory endangerment standard, not unrelated policy preferences.

Due process does not require a full evidentiary hearing before terminating Social Security disability benefits; what process is due is determined by balancing the private interest, the risk of erroneous deprivation and value of added safeguards, and the Government's interest. Where decisions rest on written medical evidence and a full postdeprivation hearing with retroactive relief is available, the existing paper-based procedures are constitutionally sufficient.

Summary judgment is proper in an antitrust conspiracy case when the alleged conspiracy makes no economic sense and the evidence is as consistent with independent competitive conduct as with conspiracy. Plaintiffs claiming a predatory pricing conspiracy must present more persuasive evidence tending to exclude independent action.

Congress holds implied powers to select appropriate means, such as chartering a national bank, to execute its enumerated powers, and states cannot tax or otherwise burden federal instrumentalities because federal law is supreme. The Necessary and Proper Clause expands rather than restricts congressional means.

A promise to pay for benefits previously conferred, without request and without legal consideration, is unenforceable even if morally compelling. Moral obligation supports a promise only where it rests on an antecedent legal or valuable consideration whose enforcement positive law has barred.

Statements from custodial police interrogation are inadmissible unless the suspect was first warned of the right to silence, that statements can be used against him, and the right to retained or appointed counsel, and then knowingly and voluntarily waived those rights.

The Due Process Clause protects the choice of related family members to live together, including extended family such as grandparents and grandchildren, and a city may not arbitrarily limit 'family' to the nuclear family. Government intrusion into family living arrangements receives careful scrutiny rather than deferential review.

A physician must disclose any personal research or economic interest that may affect his professional judgment before obtaining a patient's consent to treatment, and failure to do so supports a claim for breach of fiduciary duty or lack of informed consent. A patient has no conversion claim for the research use of excised cells, because tort liability does not extend to that setting.

A person who voluntarily participates in an amusement with obvious, inherent risks assumes those risks and cannot recover for injuries flowing from them. The participant accepts the obvious and necessary danger that constitutes the attraction.

A retail dealer with a ready supply of standard-priced goods may recover its lost profit and incidental damages under UCC section 2-708(2) after a buyer's repudiation, even when it resells the goods at the original contract price, and those damages offset the buyer's restitution claim for a deposit. The $500 cap in section 2-718(2)(b) does not limit the offset.

Public officials cannot recover libel damages for criticism of their official conduct unless they prove actual malice: knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth. This standard protects uninhibited, robust public debate and the breathing space free expression needs.

Congress may not commandeer state governments by compelling them to enact or administer a federal regulatory program, though it may encourage state action through spending conditions or the choice between state regulation and federal pre-emption. A provision forcing States to choose between taking title to waste and regulating as Congress directs is unconstitutional coercion.

A seller's response that changes the terms of a buyer's offer rejects that offer and creates a counteroffer that does not inherit the buyer's deadline, so it remains freely revocable. Once the seller contracts with another buyer and the original buyer learns of it, the original buyer can no longer accept.

A professional license earned during marriage is marital property subject to equitable distribution, valued by the enhanced earning capacity it confers. The working spouse's contributions to its acquisition entitle that spouse to an equitable share, not merely reimbursement or maintenance.

The Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses guarantee same-sex couples the fundamental right to marry, so States must license same-sex marriages and recognize those lawfully performed elsewhere. Baker v. Nelson is overruled.

A plaintiff in a diversity action cannot use ancillary jurisdiction to assert a claim against a nondiverse third-party defendant, because Congress's complete-diversity requirement cannot be evaded. Satisfying the Gibbs common-nucleus test establishes only constitutional power, not statutory jurisdiction.

Negligence liability requires a breach of a duty owed to the plaintiff herself, and that duty extends only to foreseeable plaintiffs within the zone of reasonably perceivable danger. A defendant is not liable to an unforeseeable bystander merely because the conduct was wrongful as to someone else.

A wrongfully discharged employee need not accept substitute employment that is different in kind or inferior to the lost job, and rejecting such an offer does not reduce damages for failure to mitigate. Differences in the nature of the role and the loss of contractual approval rights can establish inferiority as a matter of law.

When a contractual promise to perform work is incidental to the contract's main purpose and the cost of performing it grossly exceeds the economic benefit, damages are limited to the diminution in value rather than the cost of performance. This prevents windfall recoveries far exceeding the value of the property.

A landmark preservation law that restricts development of a designated landmark, while permitting its continued profitable use and offering transferable development rights, is not a taking requiring compensation. Takings analysis weighs economic impact, investment-backed expectations, and the character of the government action, viewing the parcel as a whole.

A state court cannot enter a binding personal judgment against a non-resident who was neither served within the state nor appeared; publication alone is ineffective. Jurisdiction over a non-resident's property requires that the property be attached or brought under the court's control at the outset of the suit.

New York's deadly force justification defense requires both a genuine belief in the need for deadly force and an objectively reasonable belief, measured by a reasonable person in the defendant's circumstances. The defendant's own view that his actions were reasonable cannot alone exonerate him.

A victim's sexual conduct with third parties, even if public and observed by the defendant earlier the same evening, is generally irrelevant to consent and is barred by the rape-shield statute. Its exclusion does not violate the defendant's right of confrontation.

Mere pursuit of a wild animal does not give the pursuer a property right in it; ownership requires actual possession or acts, such as mortal wounding or ensnaring, that place the animal under the pursuer's certain control. A clear occupancy rule promotes certainty and avoids litigation over who 'first' pursued an animal.

Each member of a continuing conspiracy is criminally liable for substantive offenses committed by a co-conspirator in furtherance of the conspiracy, even without personally participating in them. Conspiracy and the underlying substantive crime are separate offenses that may be separately punished.

The possibility that an alternative forum's law is less favorable to the plaintiff does not by itself bar forum non conveniens dismissal and should ordinarily receive little weight. The inquiry turns on convenience, and a foreign plaintiff's choice of forum receives less deference.

The Constitution's Due Process Clause protects a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy before viability, and the essential holding of Roe v. Wade is reaffirmed on the basis of liberty and stare decisis. States may regulate abortion only if the regulation does not place an undue burden, meaning a substantial obstacle, in the woman's path.

A state may require equal but separate accommodations for the races in public conveyances without violating the Fourteenth Amendment, because the Amendment secures legal equality and not social equality.

Necessity privileges a person to enter and use another's property, such as mooring a vessel to a private dock, to protect life and property from imminent peril like a violent storm. A complaint alleging that the owner, through a servant, interfered with that use states a cause of action. The court did not decide liability.

A State may criminally punish a chronic alcoholic for public drunkenness because, in the plurality's view, Robinson reaches only punishment of a mere status and does not address whether involuntary or compelled conduct may be punished, and the plurality declined to constitutionalize a doctrine of criminal responsibility. Defining criminal responsibility remains a matter for the States.

On these facts, the Court entered judgment for the defendants, so the contract could not be enforced against them where two ships bore the name 'Peerless' and each party meant a different one. The Court gave no reasons; the arguments about latent ambiguity, parol evidence, and no consensus ad idem were made by counsel.

A gratuitous promise lacking consideration can be enforced under equitable estoppel when the promisor intentionally induces the promisee to change position to her detriment in reliance. This is an early articulation of promissory estoppel, which makes a promise enforceable without bargained-for consideration where reliance is foreseeable and injustice would otherwise result.

The Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty includes a woman's right to decide whether to terminate her pregnancy, a right that states may regulate only as their compelling interests in maternal health and potential life emerge. A statute banning abortion at all stages except to save the mother's life is unconstitutional.

A landowner owes everyone lawfully on the premises, including social guests, a duty of ordinary care under general negligence principles, and the traditional trespasser-licensee-invitee classifications no longer determine that duty. A host who knows of a concealed danger and knows a guest is about to encounter it can be liable for failing to warn or repair.

Speech that is used in circumstances and is of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger of bringing about evils Congress has a right to prevent, such as obstruction of the draft during wartime, is not protected by the First Amendment. Words protected in ordinary times may be punished when their context and tendency pose proximate danger to the war effort.

All assertions of state-court jurisdiction, whether in personam, in rem, or quasi in rem, must satisfy the International Shoe minimum-contacts standard of fair play and substantial justice. The mere presence of a defendant's property in a state, when unrelated to the claim, cannot support jurisdiction.

Congress may not subject States to the extraordinary burden of federal preclearance using a coverage formula grounded in decades-old data and eradicated practices; any such disparate treatment must rest on current conditions. Section 4(b) is unconstitutional and cannot be used to determine which jurisdictions must obtain preclearance.

A State's courts may not enforce private racially restrictive covenants, because judicial enforcement is state action that denies equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. Private discriminatory agreements remain permissible, but they cannot be given effect through the coercive power of the State.

A contract may be rescinded when both parties are mistaken about a fact going to the very substance of the thing sold, such that the thing bargained for differs fundamentally from what actually exists. A barren cow and a fertile breeding cow are substantially different things, so a mutual mistake on that point voids the sale.

When an injured plaintiff cannot identify which manufacturer of a fungible, identically formulated product caused her harm, she may sue manufacturers of a substantial market share, and each is liable in proportion to its share unless it proves it did not make the product. This market share liability adapts the Summers burden-shifting rule to modern mass-produced goods.

A lawful business that becomes a public nuisance because a populous area grows around it may be enjoined, but a developer who foreseeably brings residents to the nuisance must indemnify the operator for the reasonable cost of moving or shutting down. Equity weighs the public interest and fairness to both parties rather than applying coming-to-the-nuisance rigidly.

Premeditation in first degree murder requires some period of reflection between forming the intent to kill and the killing, not merely an intent to kill, and prosecutors may not inflame the jury with penalty information or irrelevant racial, gender, and political prejudices. Cumulative prosecutorial misconduct that prejudices the degree-of-homicide determination denies a fair trial and requires reversal.

Self-defense, perfect or imperfect, requires a reasonable belief that deadly force is necessary to avoid imminent death or great bodily harm, and evidence of battered wife syndrome and speculative fear of future abuse does not satisfy imminence when the husband is asleep. The court refused to expand the imminence requirement to cover killings of non-threatening abusers.

Whether a rape victim's fear of force was reasonable is a jury question, and an appellate court may not substitute its view of the evidence for the jury's. Under the Jackson standard, evidence of coerced isolation plus actual force to the throat can sustain a conviction without physical resistance by the victim.

A property owner's title does not include the right to isolate migrant workers living on the property from government and charitable services, so service providers who enter to reach those workers are not trespassers. Property rights are limited by the human values they serve, including workers' dignity, privacy, and access to aid.

Federal diversity jurisdiction requires that all persons sharing a joint interest on each side of a suit be diverse from those on the other side. If any person sharing a joint interest is not competent to sue or be sued in federal court, jurisdiction fails.

When two defendants negligently create a risk and the plaintiff cannot prove which one caused the injury, the burden shifts to each defendant to prove he did not cause it, and failing that, both are liable. This alternative liability rule prevents negligent wrongdoers from escaping responsibility by obscuring who caused the harm.

Employment discrimination plaintiffs need not plead a prima facie case under McDonnell Douglas; the prima facie case is an evidentiary standard, and Rule 8(a)(2)'s short and plain statement giving fair notice suffices. Heightened pleading requirements can arise only through amendment of the Federal Rules, not judicial interpretation.

A therapist who determines, or under professional standards should determine, that a patient poses a serious danger of violence to a foreseeable victim must use reasonable care to protect that victim, such as by warning the victim or others likely to notify them. The protective privilege of patient confidentiality ends where the public peril begins.

Industry custom does not conclusively define reasonable care; an entire industry can lag in adopting available, inexpensive, and reliable safety precautions, and courts decide what care is required. Here, tugs towing heavy coal-laden barges without working radio receiving sets were unseaworthy, because the missing forecasts would have led prudent masters to shelter, and the owner was liable even though few operators carried them.

A sitting President is neither absolutely immune from a state grand jury subpoena for his private papers nor entitled to a heightened standard of need. He may still challenge the subpoena on grounds such as bad faith, undue burden, or interference with his official duties.

A barge owner whose attendant is absent without excuse during working hours is negligent and bears a proportionate share of resulting damages. The court framed the duty of care as a balance of the burden of precautions against the probability and gravity of loss (B < PL).

When a principal's escape is justified by necessity, no crime has been committed, so an aider and abettor cannot be convicted of aiding it. An aider and abettor may also raise his own necessity defense, but must prove every element, including that no reasonable legal alternative existed.

Presidential confidentiality is a qualified privilege, not an absolute one, and a generalized claim of executive privilege cannot defeat a specific, demonstrated need for relevant evidence in a pending criminal trial. The judiciary, not the President, has the final authority to determine the scope of executive privilege.

One who provokes a deadly confrontation, such as by an unlawful, threatening act, cannot claim self-defense unless he communicates withdrawal and withdraws in good faith. He also cannot claim the castle doctrine's no-retreat protection, which is available only to one without fault. The jury may weigh a failure to retreat in deciding whether the force used was excessive.

A claimant of land by adverse possession must prove by clear and positive proof the actual extent of the premises cultivated or improved and that he occupied them under a hostile claim of title. Occupation that is not hostile, such as building a structure knowing it is not on one's own land or believing it is, does not meet the claim of title requirement, and a later concession of the owner's title is admissible as evidence of that earlier intent.

Zoning ordinances that limit the number of unrelated persons living together as a household are reviewed deferentially under rational-basis scrutiny when they burden no fundamental right. A village may legitimately preserve a quiet, family-oriented residential character through land-use rules.

A party who deliberately uses another's property in an emergency to preserve its own more valuable property must compensate the owner for the damage, even if its conduct was prudent and necessary. Necessity excuses the act but not the obligation to pay.

Intent to harm is not required for battery when the defendant intentionally commits an unlawful act, such as kicking a classmate during a classroom session after school has been called to order. Expert opinion elicited through a hypothetical question that omits a material competing cause of the injury is inadmissible, and its admission is reversible error.

A promise to pay for a material benefit already received, made in recognition of a moral obligation arising from that benefit, is supported by consideration and is enforceable. Saving a person from death or grievous bodily harm is a material benefit capable of supporting such a promise.

A state may regulate employer-employee contracts, including by setting minimum wages, so long as the regulation is reasonable and adopted in the community's interest; freedom of contract is a qualified right under the Due Process Clause. Adkins v. Children's Hospital is overruled.

Congress may regulate local activity, including wheat grown solely for personal consumption, under the Commerce Clause if that activity, in the aggregate, has a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce. Formal labels like production versus commerce and direct versus indirect effects no longer limit the commerce power.

Courts have common law power to refuse enforcement of a contract that was unconscionable when made, even absent a controlling statute. Unconscionability combines a lack of meaningful choice with terms unreasonably favorable to the other party.

A contract that lacks an express promise by one party is enforceable if the writing, read as a whole, is instinct with an obligation, and the court here implied a promise of reasonable efforts from the exclusive agency, the profit-sharing compensation, and the agent's other promises, read together. Form and precise wording yield to the parties' evident intent and the business efficacy of the arrangement.

A defendant's connection to a forum must arise from its own purposeful conduct directed at that State, not from a consumer's unilateral decision to bring the product there. Mere foreseeability that a product may reach the forum does not satisfy due process.

When an unconscious patient suffers an unusual injury during medical treatment, res ipsa loquitur permits an inference of negligence against all defendants who had control over the patient's body or the instrumentalities of treatment, and each must explain their conduct. A plaintiff need not identify the specific negligent actor or instrumentality.

The President cannot exercise lawmaking power by seizing private property absent authorization from Congress or the Constitution. The Constitution vests lawmaking power in Congress, so the President cannot perform Congress's legislative function.