Supreme Court Bracket
Supreme Court Bracket
[A tournament bracket tree is shown with 16 participants each on the left and right side. From both sides toward the middle the brackets reduce to eight, then four, two, and one line where the latter join to a rectangle in the middle.]
[Left side:] Marbury - Madison McCulloch - Maryland Gibbons - Ogden Near - Minnesota NLRB - Jones & Laughlin Brown - Board of Education Gideon - Wainwright Griswold - Connecticut
[Right side:] Miranda - Arizona Loving - Virginia Roe - Wade United States - Nixon Bush - Gore Lawrence - Texas Massachusetts - EPA Obergefell - Hodges
[Caption below the frame:] Now that we've finished the round of 32, the Supreme Court will be moving on to the Sweet 16.

The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest federal court of the United States. A tournament bracket is a tree diagram that represents the series of games played during a knockout tournament. US Supreme Court cases are typically titled as Petitioner versus Respondent. To spoof this, Randall has put sixteen famous Supreme Court cases into a tournament bracket, as though they were games in the first round of a single-elimination tournament, and that the winners of the 16 listed court cases will somehow file against each other and then again until the final winner is selected. This is similar to college basketball's March Madness , complete with a ranking bracket. "Sweet 16" in the context of a tournament refers to the stage in a tournament where 16 competitors remain. This comic's concept is thus a word play on "court" (court of law v. basketball court).  The phrase "Supreme Court Bracket" also sounds similar to "Supreme Court Docket", which is the official schedule of cases that the Supreme Court will adjudicate (as all of these cases have been).
The cases are:
The case Marbury v. Madison declared a provision of the Judiciary Act of 1789 unconstitutional, thus preventing several late-term appointments by outgoing President John Adams from being seated under incoming President Thomas Jefferson . More importantly, the ruling established the principle of judicial review by which the Supreme Court can overturn, on the basis of unconstitutionality, laws passed by Congress and signed into law by the President . For this reason it is considered the single most important decision in American constitutional law.
The case McCulloch v. Maryland established a broad interpretation of the "necessary and proper" clause, specifically finding that Congress could incorporate a Bank of the United States because the purpose was to help carry out Congress' explicit powers under Article I, section 8.
The case Gibbons v. Ogden established that interstate commerce is regulated by the U.S. Congress according to the U.S. Constitution, that interstate navigation is fundamental to interstate commerce, and that therefore the power to regulate interstate navigation in this way rests with the U.S. Congress, not with any state legislature.
On 01 March 1824, the US Supreme Court decided in favor of Thomas Gibbons in his appeal of a case brought against him by Aaron Ogden in an attempt to prevent Gibbons from operating steamboats to transport goods and passengers between New York City, New York and Elizabethtown, New Jersey. The US Supreme Court decision reversed a prior injunction against Gibbons issued by a New York State court deciding that Ogden held exclusive navigational rights by way of having licensed them from two men to whom the New York State Legislature had granted the navigation rights in several acts between 1798 and 1807.
The case Near v. Minnesota is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision that found that prior restraints on publication violate freedom of the press as protected under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution , a principle that was applied to free speech generally in subsequent jurisprudence. The Court ruled that a Minnesota law that targeted publishers of "malicious" or "scandalous" newspapers violated the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Noteworthy it was later a key precedent in New York Times Co. v. United States (1971), in which the court ruled against the Nixon administration's attempt to enjoin publication of the Pentagon Papers.
National Labor Relations Board v Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation was a US labor law case. It declared that the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 was constitutional. It effectively preserved the New Deal , which was being pursued by US President Roosevelt in reaction to the Great Depression . Previous Supreme Court cases, unlike NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin , had invalidated New Deal statutes.
The case Brown v. Board of Education the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. It stated that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."
This ruling paved the way for the Civil Rights Movement . However, the decision did not spell out any sort of method for ending racial segregation in schools, and the Court's second decision in Brown II only ordered states to desegregate "with all deliberate speed."
In the case Gideon v. Wainwright the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that states are required under the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to provide an attorney or lawyer to defendants in criminal cases who are unable to afford their own attorneys.
In the case Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Court ruled that a statute barring birth control to prevent pregnancy, also known as contraception, was unconstitutional, at least in its application to married couples, as there was an implicit right to privacy in the "penumbras" and "emanations" of other constitutional provisions. This ruling was used as precedent in Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972), which extended the right to unmarried couples, and in Roe v. Wade and Lawrence v. Texas (see below).
In Miranda v. Arizona , it was ruled that inculpatory and exculpatory statements would not be accepted in court if a defendant was not informed of their rights under the Fifth Amendment. The "Miranda Rights" warning ("You have the right to remain silent", etc.) is now used across the US.
In Loving v. Virginia the Supreme Court ruled that state laws prohibiting interracial marriage were unconstitutional, and were struck down.  This decision was well ahead of public opinion; a Gallup poll (cited by Think Progress ) conducted the following year showed only 20% in favor.  This case was cited as precedent in Obergefell v. Hodges, listed below.
In Roe v. Wade , the Supreme Court ruled that a woman's right to privacy, balanced against the state's interest in limiting abortions , allowed women to undergo abortions in the first and second trimesters and allowed states the right to forbid third-trimester abortions.
In United States v. Nixon , the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that then-President Richard Nixon 's refusal to hand over certain tape recordings during his impeachment process was unconstitutional. This case placed limits on the power of executive privilege.
In Bush v. Gore , the Supreme Court decided the highly contested 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore, arguing in a 5-4 decision that the recount required by Florida state law could not be carried out before the December 12 deadline required by the United States Code. As such, the statewide recount was stopped, and the now-official initial count (which favored Bush) propelled Bush to the presidency.
Lawrence v. Texas ruled that sodomy laws were unconstitutional, making same-sex sexual activity legal in all US states and territories. It explicitly overturned another Supreme Court decision, Bowers v. Hardwick , a case which had previously ruled such laws to be constitutional.
In Massachusetts v. EPA , Massachusetts and 11 other states sued the EPA for not regulating carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, saying that contrary to the claims of the EPA at that point in time, greenhouse gases are pollutants. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the petitioners, forcing the EPA to start placing regulations on greenhouse gases.
In Obergefell v. Hodges , the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the right to marriage is protected for same-sex couples by the Fourteenth Amendment.
With the results given above, the "Sweet 16" of the bracket given would be as follows:
The title text refers to a practice of filling out a March Madness bracket, predicting a winner for each game up to the championship. A bracket is "busted" when the result of a game is not as predicted; because future matchups depend on previous results, the whole bracket is worthless at that point. Randall "had Massachusetts v. Connecticut in the final", predicting both parties would win all previous rounds and advance to the final game/case. Because Connecticut lost its first-round case to Griswold, his bracket is busted in the first round.
In the second part of the title text, Randall writes: "I had Massachusetts v. Connecticut in the final, probably in a case over who gets to annex Rhode Island."  In fact, there actually was a Supreme Court case Massachusetts v. Connecticut (summary at Justia.com , full text at Google Scholar ) dealing with water rights on the Connecticut River, which flows between the two states.
Rhode Island is a smaller state that borders both Massachusetts and Connecticut (and no other state), hence the joke about "who gets to annex Rhode Island."
In an actual March Madness bracket, "Massachusetts" and "Connecticut" refer to the basketball teams from the University of Massachusetts and the University of Connecticut. So it is possible that a "Massachusetts v. Connecticut" matchup could occur in the basketball championship as well.
Occasionally, cases with the same names (if not the same defendants) have occurred in the United States.
[A tournament bracket tree is shown with 16 participants each on the left and right side. From both sides toward the middle the brackets reduce to eight, then four, two, and one line where the latter join to a rectangle in the middle.]
[Left side:] Marbury - Madison McCulloch - Maryland Gibbons - Ogden Near - Minnesota NLRB - Jones & Laughlin Brown - Board of Education Gideon - Wainwright Griswold - Connecticut
[Right side:] Miranda - Arizona Loving - Virginia Roe - Wade United States - Nixon Bush - Gore Lawrence - Texas Massachusetts - EPA Obergefell - Hodges
[Caption below the frame:] Now that we've finished the round of 32, the Supreme Court will be moving on to the Sweet 16.
