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Since its existence, the Supreme Court of the United States has made many decisions on such areas as segregation, women’s rights and civil liberties, with many of these cases defining the country’s history.

One of these cases, Brown versus the Board of Education is known for its monumental decision that secured racial equality in education in 1954. A great number of schools in the 1950’s were segregated by race. In Topeka, Kansas, Linda Brown, her sister and other black students were not allowed to attend segregated white schools that were in their neighborhood. Believing that their Fourteenth Amendment rights were being violated by this segregation in the school system, the Topeka NAACP filed a case on behalf of 13 parents and 20 school children. When the Federal District Court ruled that both white and non-white students had equivalent educational facilities, the case was taken to the Supreme Court. The Court reversed the decision of the District Court and ruled that segregating schools was unconstitutional as it violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Another historic case is Roe versus Wade  which occurred in 1973 regarding the issue of abortion. In order to challenge the constitutionality of the Texas criminal laws which made aborting a fetus a felony unless a woman’s health was at risk, Jane Roe brought a class action suit against Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade. The Supreme Court upheld a woman’s right to have an abortion based on her constitutional right to privacy. The Court also gave the states the right to regulate abortions based on the mother’s health and the health of the unborn fetus, determined by the trimester of the mother’s pregnancy.