Error #10: According to the Epstein and Walker text, Justice Jackson wrote the opinion "concurring in the judgement and opinion of the court," not Clark.

Error #9: Incorrect - Justice Roberts was not a part of this court, in fact, he was actually only 3 years old during this case!

Error #8: Incorrect - Jackson is listed as concurring, not dissenting.

Error #7: This is false. Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, and President Truman vetoed it. So Congress had not "clearly chosen" to give this power to the president.

Error #6: Truman himself saw his power as Commander in Chief as enough of a justification to take this action, but the Court did not uphold this. In Black's opinion of the Court, he clearly states: "It is clear that, if the President had authority to issue the order he did, it must be found in some provision of the Constitution." So, this action cannot be upheld, according to the Court's decision.

Error #5: They ruled in favor of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company, and more specifically, in favor of the United Steelworkers of America.

Error #4: the correct answer here is "No." In the 6-3 decision, the court held that the President did NOT have the authority to issue the order.

Error #2: It was during the Korean War, not Vietnam.

Error #1: Incorrect - this should read "steel" industry, not the sugar manufacturing industry.

Error #3: This should read "the President," not "Congress."

Error #9 - Justice Kennedy did not dissent, he voted with the majority. ...Justice is also misspelled. Does that count as Error #10? :)

Error #8 - Justice Brennan actually states the opposite. On Page 453 of Epstein & Walker: "If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the Government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable."

Note - On the Oyez.org Case Brief, which I referenced to make sure I understood the Epstein text correctly, they state the question as being, "Is the desecration of an American flag, by burning or otherwise, a form of speech that is protected under the First Amendment?" ...rather than "does the Texas law prohibiting flag burning violate the 1st Amendment freedom of expression?" ...its seems from the text of Brennan's opinion that both questions were the main concern of the case, and either way, the Holding remains a "Yes" by a 5-4 vote.

Error #3 - This was not the action that got him arrested. Gregory Lee Johnson didn't paint a flag on his chest, he burned an American flag.

Error #7 - This part of the reasoning doesn't follow the O'Brien test.

Error #6 - The O'Brien test examines "whether the regulation is unrelated to content and narrowly tailored to achieve the government's interest." Not whether the regulation is placed on an action that is noncommunicative.

Error #5 - This should read "First" Amendment, not "Second."

Error #4 - The law he was convicted under was a Texas state law, not an act of Congress.

Error #2 - The protestor's name was Gregory Lee Johnson, not Arthur Smith.

Error #1 - Incorrect citation that excludes the year. The proper citation would read 491 U.S. 397 (1989)

Error #13: according to the Epstein & Walker text, the dissents ended with the previous dissent (Souter leading with Stevens, Ginsburg and Breyer joining). There is no mention of Stevens writing an extra dissent.

Error #12: Incorrect - O'Connor was a concurring opinion with Thomas.

Error #11: Incorrect - Rehnquist writes the opposite, that "We need not consider this argument in detail, since it was flatly rejected in Mueller, where we found it irrelevant that 96% of parents taking deductions for tuition expenses paid tuition at religious schools…."

Error #10: Incorrect - Rehnquist wrote that the Court found that the program challenged here IS one of true private choice consistent with Mueller, Witters, and Zobrest, and thus constitutional.

Error #9: Incorrect - this should read "the program is not readily subject to challenge under the establishment clause."

Error #8: Incorrect vote tally. The correct vote conclusion was 5-4.

Error #7: This should read "violate the Establishment Clause?"

Error #6: Incorrect - it was because religious schools were the choice of the parents of 97% percent of the students who used tuition vouchers to attend private schools. A majority of students who used the scholarship program to enroll in religious schools were not of the same faith as the churches whose schools they attended.

Error #5: This should read "Establishment Clause"

Error #4: It was the Cleveland School District, not Baltimore.

Error #2: Not an official legal citation. A correct legal citation for the case would be - 536 U.S. 639 (2002)

Error #1: Incorrect year. The correct year is 2002.

Error #3: The correct page from Epstein & Walker is p394

In the Epstein text, it says that one of the seven Supreme Court Justices, Thomas Todd, did not participate in the decision. So it was unanimous, but only among 6 of the 7. I wonder why Todd didn't participate? Does anyone know from the text or other history?

This word choice seems dangerous in how vague it is. A lot of actions that a state might take could be defined as "burdening" a law enacted by Congress. Who decides what is a burden? I wonder if there have been cases that have happened since that argue over whether a state action is a "burden" to a national government function? Or if this part of Marshall's argument has ever been used as precedent for the federal government to stifle state power?

Is the "embarrassment" Marshall is referring to here the events of Shay's Rebellion? We know that the invention of Federalism was specifically an attempt to remedy the pitfalls of the Articles of Confederation, and that the Articles created a weak central government. I remember reading about Shay's Rebellion that the national government found themselves unable to fund troops to be sent to counter the Rebellion. Is that because the power to send national troops into states was not "expressly" delegated to the US government? Or are there other "embarrassments" that arose from this part of the Articles, especially seeing as Marshall made "embarrassments" plural?

I realize this is just an example he's using to prove his point, that every word of the constitution is important and that the constitution should trump other laws. However, I've never heard of either of these - A "bill of attainder" or an "ex post facto" law. Does anyone know what these are?

As a Federalist, Marshall knows that many of the people reading this opinion will be Anti-Federalists. I'd love if my classmates would weigh in: Do you think he is using the exaggerated language of "omnipotence" to appeal to the Anti-Federalist fear of concentrated power? Do we think Marshall is speaking from a totally neutral judicial stance here, or do aggrandized depictions like these hint that he is letting his political bias shine through?

This assertion is fascinating to me. In my interpretation, Marshall is basically saying that every single clause in the constitution has a deliberate effect. I wonder, are there any clauses that the framers explicitly wrote as transitional sentences between two more important thoughts that have been interpreted to have a huge effect? In other words, was Marshall right to say that every single clause was supposed to have an effect?

Having no prior knowledge of the Establishment Clause, I believe I've been able to glean a little of what it might say from the course of listening to this case. The application of it seems to be broken into two halves of conditionality, "endorsement" and "entanglement." Does anyone on the thread have a definition of what these two conditions mean?

Based on Justice Breyer's tone in this section, which seems to indicate annoyance with the respondant, I'm going to conclude that he was one of the Justices who voted with the majority. While it is possible that his tone is merely a tool to probe the strength of Layton's legal argument, it sounds more like he has already made up his mind and is growing impatient with having to hear Layton's case.

Do any of my fellow students know what Justice Kagan is referring to here? Is Cortman's "white light" perhaps a five-minute warning light, since we are reaching the 25-minute mark, and each party gets 30 minutes? Or perhaps it just means "it's time to wrap it up?"

I'm curious, in their attempts to, as Professor Roberts characterized it, "probe the strength of their legal arguments, implications and hypothetical effects," how often do Justices describe hypothetical situations? If there was a statistic on how many times, on average per case, a hypothetical was posed, how high or low do we think it would be?

For those who were unfamiliar with the phrase, as I was, Oxford defines "passé" as "no-longer fashionable; out of date." By asking Cortman whether he believes the precedent set by Everson holds, and subtly confirming that she believes it does, I think Justice Ginsberg is signaling her intention to Dissent, eventually becoming one of the two Justices in the minority of the final decision.

In providing Cortman the opportunity to directly refute Justice Sotomayor's reasoning, I believe Justice Alito is revealing that he is part of the majority that will come to decide in favor of Trinity Lutheran.

Although I wasn't feeling sure beforehand, this moment from Justice Sotomayor fortified my notion that she was the second dissenting Justice in this case. Just as Ginsberg did, she chose to utilize the Stare Decisis method of decision making, and asserts here that the older a legal precedent that has been set is, the more firmly it holds as an establishment of proper interpretation of law. This solififies her argument that follows, that as a country we should not fund religious places of worship.