Seminal Opinion

David Giacalone (via PrawfsBlawg) is asking a great question:

Was there a particular case -- a Seminal Opinion -- that strongly influenced your attitude toward the legal system or the legal profession, or that helped you decide the role you wanted to play within the profession?  Did one majority or dissenting opinion plant seeds from which your lawyer psyche grew?  If so, what was it and what difference has it made in your professional goals or practice?

Before law school, religious convictions moved to me towards criminal defense and civil rights work.  But Atwater ensured my beliefs remained firm.  (In Atwater, a police officer arrested a soccer mom for not wearing a seat belt.  Her children cried as the police officer handcuffed her.)

Putting aside that Atwater is a constitutional abomination: what bothered me most was that the cop arrested a soccer mom, who now has a criminal history.  He left her children crying and screaming in the car.  Those of you who have children should have no problem putting yourself in Ms. Atwater's shoes.  How much trauma was done to Ms. Atwater?  Would her children remember?  What would Ms. Atwater tell them when they asked, "Why were you put in jail?"  Why did the police officer need to abuse his authority?

That such people as the arresting officer pervade the system reminded me why I wanted to be on the side of people.  That the Supreme Court ignored the factual injustice and constitutional violation reminded me why religious people are under a moral obligation to represent those charged with crimes.  Atwater reminded me that criminal defendants are truly "the least of thee."

What's your seminal opinion?

Comments

[Mahan Atma]

Employment Division of Oregon v. Smith, in which the Court held the Free Exercise Clause does not protect Native Americans' use of peyote in their religious ceremonies.

IMO, it's one of the worst decisions the Court has handed down in modern times. Two reasons: 1)To me, there are few rights more sacrosanct than a person's ability to commune with God; and 2) the Framers ratified First Amendment precisely to protect this precious right.

Justice Scalia, on the other hand, saw fit to render the Free Exercise Clause pretty much meaningless...

[KipEsquire]

This might not count, but Carolene Products' Footnote 4 keeps me going sometimes when I feel down from seeing too much "democracy in action."

In the same vein, if I had to pick entire cases they would be Romer v. Evans on the upside and Wickard v. Filburn on the downside.

[Mike]

Kip wrote: "This might not count ..."

Everythings counts. Thanks for the comment.

[Dylan]

I thought your change from "seminal" to "seminole" was a setup for a discussion of Seminole Tribe, but I guess not.

[Mike]

Dylan, actually, Seminole Tribe was a close second, and I was about to do that set-up you mentioned when I went with Atwater. Then I forgot the change the title. That, or I'm Illuminati, er, I mean, illiterate.

[Norm Pattis]

Griswold v. Connecticut. Say what you will about penumbral reasoning, there is no getting around the notion that government is a cancer that can grow and spread and lay claim to everything. That Griswold was necessary reminds me of the power of assumptions. How could government ever assume it had a power to reach intimate affairs???

[karl]

McCleskey v. Kemp, McCleskey v. Zant, McCleskey v. Zant (denial of cert)

Scalia's personal note to the other justices in this case indicating that he believed that race played a part in McCleskey I being sentencded to death and his cavalier "oh well" vote for death. McCleskey II's hideous rules permitting those who had claims of constitutioal import could still be executed if their attorneys sucked and didn't raise teh claim earlier in the proceedings. Finally, McCleskey III with justice Marshall's near legendary Dissent (that was never filed) that stated McCleskey I & II could be summed up in the simple phrase "kill the n----r."

[Timothy Sandefur]

Tinker v. Des Moines School District, definitely.

[Brian]

I hope 5 years from now, someone would answer Kelo v. New London.

[Ian Huckaby]

Can't say I've studied enough law yet, but off the top of my head I'm going with South Dakota v. Dole.

Wickard v. Filburn is a close second.

[Eh Nonymous]

Seminal? Twig-bending? (as the twig is bent, so grows the branch)

I hated Wickard, but there were so _many_ I hated. Scalia's ED v Smith, as noted, the "peyote" case, got it wrong where it counted. O'Connor in the gravesite case, Lyng v. Northwest Indian CPA, same criticism: my God that was badly decided. The Reynolds case which is still binding law as to marriage is interesting, too; the Supreme Court in 1878 laid down what remains the Law of the Land on marriage as one's conscience and religion dictates, by addressing much the same question as ED v. Smith, which is why that case is only half wrong (right on the precedent, awful on the reasoning and decision to apply that precedent): "whether religious belief can be accepted as a justification of an overt act made criminal by the law of the land." See 98 U.S. 145.

The one where the jurors are partying, Tanner v. U.S., 483 US 107 (1987), but because it's not an "extrinsic influence" (wrong, doubly wrong) there's no way to bring in the "not relevant" evidence of the massive, inconceivably awful due process violation presented by drugged, high, felony-drug-weight-selling jurors. This is my least favorite rule ever, Rule 606(b); Mike, I promised I'd cover some of that kind of thing. "Substantial policy considerations" my ASS. That decision makes me very angry, to this day.

One of the worst decisions ever: Johnson and Graham's Lessee v. M'Intosh, one of the famed Marshall trilogy which demolished Indian rights in their own land, by judicial approval of legislative and executive and private theft. In M'Intosh, aka McIntosh, 8 Wheat. 543, the Court decided that since Indians cannot hold absolute rights in land (!) that when the government allowed them to have any rights in the property they lived on, it was a life tenancy only; when they attempted to sell their land for money to another white man, but the government had sold the same land later to a different white man, title derived from the Native American grant was no good. Amazing outcome, uplifting language, despicable language. It burns me, even at this great distance of 182 years.