Clay v. United States

Glossary

• bellum justum Latin for “just war,” that is, a war that is justly waged
• brief the document submitted by the parties to a legal dispute outlining their positions for the justices
• Chief Justice Hughes Charles Evans Hughes, chief justice of the Supreme Court during the years of the Great Depression
• dhimmis non-Muslims who live in a Muslim state
• Elijah Muhammad the leader of the Nation of Islam from 1934 to 1975
• granted certiorari the phrase used by a higher court to indicate that it has agreed to hear a case by demanding the record from the lower court whose case the higher court is reviewing
• induction formal entry into the military
• jihad in Islam, a struggle or holy war
• Justice Douglas William O. Douglas, a firm civil libertarian and the longest-serving justice in the history of the Supreme Court
• Justice Harlan John Marshall Harlan II, a conservative member of the Supreme Court at the time
• Justice Marshall Thurgood Marshall, the only black member of the Supreme Court at the time
• Koran the Islamic sacred scripture, often spelled Qur'an
• Learned Hand a prominent twentieth-century district and appeals court judge and legal philosopher from New York whose judicial opinions the Supreme Court cites more frequently than those of any lower court judge
• Mediterranean littoral the coastal areas of the Mediterranean Sea
• Moslem an alternative spelling of the more common “Muslim”
• Nation of Islam the so-called Black Muslims, or the branch of Islam as practiced by some African Americans
• Per Curiam a decision issued by a court as a whole rather than a single judge
• Qur'an the Islamic sacred scripture, later referred to as the Koran
• Selective Service System the government agency that conducted the military draft