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Jurisprudential homonyms

Posted By Howard Wasserman On October 31, 2012 @ 11:28 pm In Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Today I was writing about the Supreme Court’s decision in Hicks v. Miranda [1], a 1975 Younger abstention case. This, of course, is only the Court’s second most-famous Miranda case. This Miranda, who was the plaintiff in the case, owned and operated a theatre in California trying to show “Deep Throat”.

This got me thinking: What are some examples of pairs or sets of SCOTUS cases featuring parties with the same or similar names, especially where one case is much more famous than the others. Note that I’m thinking of cases involving different parties who happen to have the same names. So this will not include the multiple habeas cases involving Louie L. Wainwright [2], the long-time Secretary of the Florida Department of Corrections. Nor will it include Harry Connick, Sr., the long-serving District of Attorney for New Orleans, who helped give us execrable law in both public-employee speech [3] and municipal liability [4]. Different spellings are ok–for example, Ginsberg [5] and Ginzburg [6].

Have at it in the comments.

5 Comments (Open | Close)

5 Comments To "Jurisprudential homonyms"

#1 Comment By Josh Blackman On October 31, 2012 @ 11:55 pm

Bush v. Gore and BMW v. Gore
Black v. United States and Virginia v. Black
Clinton v. Jones and Clinton v. New York

#2 Comment By Josh Blackman On November 1, 2012 @ 12:02 am

(these I checked online)
Brown v. EMA, Brown v. Plata, and Brown v. Board of Education
Rumsfield v. Padilla and Padilla v. Kentucky
Kansas v. Marsh and Marsh v. Alabama
Burlington NOrthern & Santa Fe Railway v. White and Republican Party of Minnesota v. White
Marshall v. Marshall (too easy?)

#3 Comment By Milbarge On November 1, 2012 @ 12:50 am

United States v. O’Brien (1968) — about burning draft cards and the First Amendment — I would say is significantly more famous than United States v. O’Brien (2010) — about the “machinegun” enhancement in 924(c).

#4 Comment By Matt On November 1, 2012 @ 11:34 am

Rumsfield v. Padilla and Padilla v. Kentucky

The extra nice thing about this one is that the Padilla in both cases is Jose Padilla, though a completely different Jose Padilla.

#5 Comment By Trudy On November 1, 2012 @ 1:22 pm

This one is about ballot initiatives instead of judicial decisions, but in California, there’s the Proposition 8 that deals with the exclusionary rule in criminal procedure, and the Proposition 8 that deals with same sex marriage.

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URLs in this post:

[1] Hicks v. Miranda: http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/422/332/case.html

[2] Louie L. Wainwright: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louie_L._Wainwright

[3] public-employee speech: http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=12292534138488546769&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr

[4] municipal liability: http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/connick-v-thompson/

[5] Ginsberg: http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8460647428333624773&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr

[6] Ginzburg: http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=12404909807077661368&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr

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