Lest anyone feel that this thread has made a resounding point out of everybody knowing the names of at least two SCOTUS cases, please remember that it’s highly self-selecting. I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of Americans could not name two without significant hinting and prodding, and could probably only come up with a partial name (e.g., “Miranda”) or a description.
I think few people are going to appear in a thread like this and say, “Nope. Couldn’t name one.”
Or gerunds, either (“Your honor, I am objecting to that”).
You certainly fail to preserve your objection for the record if you don’t state grounds. (I’m not specifically familiar with Maryland but I can’t believe that ‘Objection!’ without more, if denied by the tribunal without asking for grounds, is sufficient to preserve the error for appeal.)
So you have the immediately obvious objections, where it’s crystal clear to the judge, opposing counsel, the court reporter, the clerk, and the bailiff why you’re objecting, and most judges don’t tend to insist on hearing grounds for those. But those are few and far between; much more common (in criminal defense, anyway) is that you know the judge is going to rule against you anyway, so you get your objection and the grounds on the record with specificity, and as many alternate theories as you think won’t piss off the judge, and when the transcript comes back you tab them all for your appellate brief.
I have a hilarious story involving a freshly-minted new prosecutor and my objection that he failed to establish the asportation element of the theft charged. He had no idea what I was talking about.
The vast majority of Americans have not spent the last 15 years getting “experience” in running government. For all the crowing the Reps have been doing about how much experience she has, I’d like that to be translatable to some sort of casual familiarity with issues important to running a government.
Yeah - I guess I didn’t motice that most of the legal TV shows and movies were set in MD.
Oh yeah - when I mentioned this last night while preparing dinner, my HS senior popped off Brown v. Bd. of Ed. without skipping a beat, and then 2 or 3 more just to prove she could.
Yeah, I consider my kid smart, but personally I’d like my VP to be at least as well informed on constitutional law and the federal judiciary as a HS senior.
We have The Wire and Homicide, what more do you want?
As to objections:
Rule 5-103. Rulings on evidence.
(a) Effect of erroneous ruling. Error may not be predicated upon a ruling that admits or excludes evidence unless the party is prejudiced by the ruling, and
(1) Objection. In case the ruling is one admitting evidence, a timely objection or motion to strike appears of record, stating the specific ground of objection, if the specific ground was requested by the court or required by rule
You do still have to explicitly state constitutionally/declaration of rights based objections, but nothing more than a simple, “objection” is needed for evidentiary objections.
Roe v. Wade and Marbury v. Madison were the only ones that sprang to mind immediately, though I can explain the cases involved for most of the ones mentioned in this thread given the name. After much pondering, I can also add to the list in this thread Wisconsin v. Yoder, where it was determined that the Amish don’t have to educate their kids past eighth grade.
Really? Most people don’t know of Roe v. Wade or Brown v Board or “The Dred Scott case”, or “Bush against Gore, you know, in 2000?” I mean, if you’ve took US history in high school you’ve at least heard of the first three, and unless you were in a coma in 2000, you know that the 2000 election was settled in the Supreme Court. Sure, most people can’t tell you much about them, but they’ve at least heard of them
In our discussion I only mentioned the ability to name a SCt case other than Roe v. Wade - didn’t say anything about agreeing or disagreeing. She was pretty much incredulous that ANYONE could not name Brown.
I just took an informal survey at the deli on the first floor of my office building. I asked 14 to name two Supreme Court cases, and then I asked their professions. Three were attorneys, and I am excluding them from the results.
Of 11 people left, three were able to name two cases. Nine could name Roe v. Wade as either the only case or one of the two (all three who could name two cases picked Roe as one of them). Of the 11, two were deli workers and nine were customers.
Not surprising - in line with so may surveys you see about the lack of information possessed by the general population. Always makes me think how limited of a view I have of our nation’s population’s mindset, as I pass most of my time among the very top portion of educated/informed folk, and only in a narrow geographical area.
Of course - I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that at least the 2 deli workers might not have been running for national office.
I blanked on Roe v. Wade for a minute or two. It was actually the fifth I came up with (two others being Boy Scouts v. Dale, miranda v. arizona). I’m actually quite impressed with myself considering I’m Canadian.
Asked my son on the way home from school today. He came up with Brown v Board of Ed and “Thorogood…versus…uh, Bryant?”, by which I assume he means Bryan - which was actually an English case, not American, and tossed out sometime in the 19th century (according to Google - I’m not pretending to know anything about that one!). When prompted with “Roe v…?” He was able to come up with “Wade!” and knew that it was “something about abortion, right?”
So 1 outta 2 for him, a 15 year old victim of the Chicago Public School System.
Posting before looking at the thread, so as to avoid cheating.
[ul]
[li]Brown v. Board of Ed.[/li][li]Roe v. Wade[/li][li]ACLU v. Reno (the Communications Decency Act ruling)[/li][li]Marbury v. Madison[/li][li]Lawrence v. Texas[/li][li]the Dred Scott case (who was the other litigant?)[/li][li]Hamdan v. Rumsfeld[/li][li]D.C. v. Heller[/li][li]Miranda v. (uh, was it Texas?)[/li][/ul]
By way of comparison, I can name only three cases of my country’s (South Africa’s) highest court, the Constitutional Court:
[ul]
[li]State v. Makwanyane (declaring the death penalty unconstitutional)[/li][li]Minister of Home Affairs v. Fourie (legalizing same-sex marriage)[/li][li]RCAG v. Transnet (railway company is obliged to ensure the security of passengers)[/li][/ul]
Well, that’s true, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with what I was talking about. I presume you’re discussing Palin? She wasn’t mentioned in my post, nor in the OP.
The question was whether people could name two cases. Personally, I couldn’t have named Dred Scott. It’s been 30 years since I even heard the name of that case. It hardly comes up in casual conversation.
Just for kicks, I just tested this on the four people in my store right now: three high school juniors and a retired ex-army officer. Three of them couldn’t name a single case. One of the high school kids came up with Roe v Wade.
