Supreme Court of the United States, 1972

The Supreme Court reversed the convictions of eight defendants under Jacksonville, Florida's vagrancy ordinance, holding the ordinance void for vagueness under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Court held that a servicemember who exhausted military administrative remedies could pursue federal habeas corpus review of a factually baseless denial of conscientious-objector status even while court-martial proceedings were pending.

The Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit, holding that a federal district court need not stay a habeas corpus petition challenging a serviceman's conscientious objector denial merely because a court‑martial is pending, because the petitioner had fully exhausted military administrative remedies and no prompt…

The Court held that a bad debt incurred by a shareholder-employee has a proximate relation to the taxpayer's trade or business only when the taxpayer's dominant motivation was business-related; a merely significant business motivation is insufficient.

The Court held that the proper standard for determining whether a bad debt is a business debt under §166 is a dominant‑motivation test, not the significant‑motivation test applied by the lower courts, and therefore reversed the judgment and remanded for a judgment n.o.v. in favor of the United States.

The Supreme Court granted certiorari, held that the petitioner's summation statements did not constitute criminal contempt, and reversed the conviction. The Court emphasized that contempt requires an imminent threat to the administration of justice, not merely vehemence, and noted that the lower courts may still…

The Court, in an opinion authored by Justice Douglas, affirmed the Ninth Circuit and remanded for trial, holding that the petitioners' conduct is not immune from the antitrust laws despite the First Amendment right of petition.

The Court held that the Due Process Clause does not require the prosecution to prove the voluntariness of a challenged confession beyond a reasonable doubt: proof by a preponderance of the evidence yields the reliable and clear-cut determination that Jackson v.

Justice Stewart wrote for a majority affirming the Ninth Circuit's decision to remand the case for resentencing, holding that the use of prior convictions obtained in violation of Gideon v. Wainwright taints the sentencing inquiry and is not harmless error.