Case Citator › Ex Parte Virginia

Ex Parte Virginia

Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.

Criticized by some courts
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Citation
100 U.S. 339
Decided
Confirmed treatments
1
Flagged citations read
37 of 37
Citing cases (total)
37
Treatment dates
1978
Criticized by some courts
At least one reviewed court has criticized this case’s reasoning. No reviewed court has overruled it. Ex Parte Virginia remains authoritative on Congress's Fourteenth Amendment enforcement power, but the Second Circuit criticized one of its dicta, as listed below. All 37 flagged citations have been read.
More on how this was screened

The criticized statement suggested that only Congress, and not courts, could enforce the Amendment.

Every treatment on this page is written from the citing opinion itself, with a verbatim quote, never copied from a commercial citator. A citation flagged by our screen but not shown here was read and found not to weaken this case.

37 later cases cite Ex Parte Virginia; 37 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.

Relying on Ex Parte Virginia?

This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.

Treatments

Criticized

  • The Second Circuit described Ex Parte Virginia's dictum about judicial enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment as dead after later Supreme Court decisions.

    Turpin v. Mailet · Second Circuit · filed

    It has, however, not had since Brown v. Board of Education, supra, or for that matter Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, 383 U.S. 663, 86 S.Ct. 1079, 16 L.Ed.2d 169 (1966), any validity for the proposition that the Amendment can be enforced Only if Congress acts. That is the Ex parte Virginia proposition which the dissent would advance. Ex parte Virginia, supra, may be alive and well in the dissent's eye, but its dictum quoted by the dissent, Post at 175, is dead and, hopefully, buried.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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