Supreme Court of the United States, 1927

The Court unanimously upheld Massachusetts’s statute treating a nonresident’s operation of a motor vehicle on its highways as appointment of a state official to receive process in actions arising from highway accidents.

Justice Sanford’s opinion for the Court upheld Whitney’s conviction under California’s Criminal Syndicalism Act. The Court accepted the state appellate court’s supplemental certification as establishing jurisdiction, confined review to the federal questions decided below, and rejected challenges based on evidentiary…

Justice Holmes’s opinion upheld Virginia’s compulsory sterilization statute as applied to Carrie Buck and affirmed the judgment authorizing her sterilization. The Court concluded that the statutory safeguards afforded procedural due process, that the legislative declarations and judicial findings justified…

Chief Justice Taft delivered the Court’s opinion holding that Tumey’s trial before the village mayor denied due process because the mayor received substantial fees only upon conviction and, as the village’s chief executive responsible for its finances, had an institutional incentive to convict and impose…