Two cases on the first version of this list no longer stand. In June 2022 the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade (1973). Two years later, in June 2024, it overruled Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. (1984). Both had been called cornerstones, and both had been cited for decades.
That is the point of this post. A landmark case is a decision courts return to, and the Court can still change its mind about it. Here are ten decisions that anyone learning American law meets early, what each one decided, and what has happened to it since. This is not a count of citations. We chose the cases for what they decided and how often they come up.
Who decides what the Constitution means
Marbury v. Madison (1803), decided February 24, 1803. Chief Justice John Marshall wrote that "it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is." If a law conflicts with the Constitution, he reasoned, the Constitution controls and the court must decline to apply the law. That is judicial review, and every claim that a court may strike down a statute traces back to this opinion.
United States v. Nixon (1974), decided July 24, 1974. President Nixon refused to hand over tape recordings that a special prosecutor had subpoenaed for a criminal trial, citing executive privilege. The Court held that neither the separation of powers nor the need for confidential advice supports "an absolute, unqualified Presidential privilege of immunity from judicial process under all circumstances." A general claim of confidentiality had to give way to the specific need for evidence in a pending criminal case. The opinion cites Marbury in support: the courts decide where the limits are.
People accused of crimes
Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), decided March 18, 1963. Clarence Gideon was tried for a felony in Florida. He had no money and no lawyer, asked the court to appoint one, and was refused. The Court held that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel applies to state criminal trials, so a state must provide a lawyer to a defendant who cannot afford one. It overruled Betts v. Brady (1942), which had required counsel only in special circumstances. The Court wrote that lawyers in criminal courts "are necessities, not luxuries."
Miranda v. Arizona (1966), decided June 13, 1966. A person in custody must be told, before questioning, that they have the right to remain silent, that anything they say can be used against them in court, and that they have the right to a lawyer, appointed if they cannot afford one. Police recite these warnings to this day. Without them, what the person says in custody generally cannot be used by the prosecution.
Equality and speech
Brown v. Board of Education (1954), decided May 17, 1954. The Court held that segregation in public schools deprives the children who attend them of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. "In the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place," it wrote. "Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." The ruling answered the doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) for public schools. It became the foundation for later challenges to segregation elsewhere.
New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964), decided March 9, 1964. A public official who sues for defamation over a statement about their official conduct must show "actual malice": that the statement was made knowing it was false, or with reckless disregard of whether it was true. The rule gives newspapers and critics room to be wrong in good faith when they write about people in power.
Privacy and liberty
Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), decided June 7, 1965. Connecticut made it a crime to use contraceptives. The Court struck the law down, finding that it invaded the right of marital privacy, which it located in the "penumbra" of specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights. That reasoning opened the way to the privacy cases that followed.
Lawrence v. Texas (2003), decided June 26, 2003. The Court held that a Texas law making it a crime for two adults of the same sex to engage in private sexual conduct violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It said of Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), which had upheld a similar law, that it "should be and now is overruled."
Two cornerstones that came down
Roe v. Wade (1973), decided January 22, 1973. The Court held that the right of privacy, which it grounded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty, "is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy." The Court revisited the ruling in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992). On June 24, 2022, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022), the Court held that "the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion" and that "Roe and Casey must be overruled." The authority to regulate abortion, it said, returns to the people and their elected representatives.
Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. (1984), decided June 25, 1984. When a statute was ambiguous, a court reviewing a federal agency's reading of it asked whether the agency's answer was a permissible construction of the statute. If it was, the court accepted it. That rule of deference governed administrative law for forty years. On June 28, 2024, in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024), the Court held that courts "may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous," and stated: "Chevron is overruled." Courts now decide for themselves what an ambiguous statute means.
What the list shows
Look at how these cases changed the law. Gideon overruled Betts. Lawrence overruled Bowers. Dobbs overruled Roe, and Loper Bright overruled Chevron. A decision that stands for decades has not been settled for good. It stands until a majority of the Court decides it was wrong. When you cite a case as a cornerstone, check what the Court has said about it since. The opinions are on SCOTUS by Etalia.ai, and each case name above links to its page.
Sources
- Marbury v. Madison (1803), 5 U.S. 137
- Brown v. Board of Education (1954), 347 U.S. 483
- Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), 372 U.S. 335
- New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964), 376 U.S. 254
- Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), 381 U.S. 479
- Miranda v. Arizona (1966), 384 U.S. 436
- Roe v. Wade (1973), 410 U.S. 113
- United States v. Nixon (1974), 418 U.S. 683
- Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. (1984), 467 U.S. 837
- Lawrence v. Texas (2003), 539 U.S. 558
- Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022), 597 U.S. 215
- Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024), 603 U.S. 369
Updated November 2026.
This post was rewritten with AI (Claude) and reviewed by an editor before publication.
