How would feminist judges change the way in which we conceive of criminal law? Would the application of feminist jurisprudence change the answer to difficult criminal law problems? These are questions at the core of this text on rewritten opinions in criminal law.

Petitioner, Homer Plessy, asserts that the Separate Car Act violates the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Because we conclude that the Act instantiates and bolsters White supremacy,3 it cannot be sustained. As context is important to understanding the Act’s intended effects and this Court’s conclusion, we begin with history.

Argued October 17, 1967.Decided December 18, 1967.

Mr. Justice CAPERS delivered the opinion of the Court.1

We are not precisely told how Charles Katz, the petitioner, came to the FBI’s attention as someone involved in illegal gambling. But clearly by early 1965, the FBI considered the petitioner a person worth keeping an eye on. What we are told is that starting around February 4, 1965, FBI agents began tailing the petitioner, and continued tailing him for about two weeks. Their surveillance of the petitioner, presumably without his knowledge, revealed that the petitioner had a daily habit of making telephone calls from a particular row of telephone booths on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. Further investigation, presumably through the telephone company, revealed that the petitioner’s calls were placed to a number in Massachusetts, which number the FBI traced to a known gambler. Armed with this information, but lacking a warrant, the FBI secretly placed a recording device on top of the bank of phones the petitioner had been using.

Justice Marshall* delivered the opinion of the Court.

In this case, we decide whether it is consistent with the Fourth Amendment for a police officer who observed a traffic violation to use that violation as the justification to perform a racially-selective traffic stop, or as the pretext to investigate a crime for which the officer does not have probable cause. We answer that question in the negative.

Argued December 13, 1971.Reargued October 11, 1972.Decided January 22, 1973.

Justice MURRAY, concurring in the judgment.1

Since 1854, Texas, like many other American jurisdictions, has made it a crime to procure or attempt to procure an abortion, except with respect to “an abortion procured or attempted by medical advice for the purpose of saving the life of the mother.” Tex. Penal Code Arts. 1191–94, 1196 (1961). Petitioner Jane Roe is an unmarried woman living in Dallas County, Texas. She alleges that, unmarried and pregnant, she sought to terminate her pregnancy by an abortion “performed by a competent, licensed physician, under safe, clinical conditions.” She was unable to secure a “legal” abortion in Texas because her life did not appear to be threatened by the continuation of her pregnancy. Lacking the resources to travel to another jurisdiction to secure a legal abortion under safe conditions, she was forced to continue her pregnancy.

I dissent today from the majority’s decision in these cases because the detestable segregation in the public schools that the majority finds unconstitutional is a manifestation of the evil of racism the depths and pervasiveness of which this Court fails even to acknowledge, much less address and attempt to correct.

Argued January 15, 1908.Decided February 24, 1908.

Justice Khiara M. BRIDGES delivered the opinion of the Court.

Submitted Oct. 12, 1927.Decided Nov. 21, 1927.

Chief Justice REGINALD OH delivered the opinion of the Court.