South Carolina v. Katzenbach

Glossary

• amici curiae Latin for “friends of the court”; persons or organizations with an interest in a case but who are not party to it and who file court briefs with a view to influencing a case's outcome
• bill of attainder a law that punishes a person or group of persons without benefit of trial
• Chief Justice Marshall John Marshall, the chief justice of the United States in the early nineteenth century, whose decisions tended to enforce the power of the federal government
• Civil War Amendments the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, passed in the wake of the Civil War
• Constitutional Convention the convention in Philadelphia in 1787 at which the U.S. Constitution was drafted
• ex parte Latin for “by (or for) one party,” used in the law to refer to a legal proceeding brought by one party without the presence of the other being required
• justiciable able to come under the authority of the court
• literacy tests written tests administered to potential voters to determine, as a condition for voting, whether they can read
• McCulloch v. Maryland a landmark 1819 U.S. Supreme Court decision in which Chief Justice John Marshall held that states could not impede the power of the federal government
• nullity legal ineffectiveness or invalidity
• parens patriae Latin for “parents of the nation,” referring to the power of the state to intervene to protect people from an abuse