This case concerned a wife's suit in the District of Columbia to enforce a 1938 New York judgment for alimony arrears against her ex-husband, who had moved to D.C. The New York judgment was entered ex parte under state procedure without notice to the husband after earlier contested proceedings had determined some arrears through a 1936 order. The Supreme Court held that the 1938 judgment was not entitled to full faith and credit because entry without notice violated due process, though it directed further proceedings to determine what facts were established by prior litigated orders and whether any recovery could proceed on other grounds.
The case concerned an Arkansas severance tax on timber cut for commercial purposes from national forest reserves, imposed on private contractors who purchased and severed the timber under contracts with the United States. Appellants challenged the tax as applied to both pre-statehood public domain lands and later-purchased federal lands, arguing it was invalid under the Supremacy Clause and federal property powers. The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled that the state lacked authority to tax severance from original public domain lands but could tax it on purchased lands without unconstitutionally burdening the United States. The U.S. Supreme Court examined its jurisdiction over the appeals and reviewed the state court's application of the tax statute and constitutional limits.
This case involved independent motion picture theater owners suing film distributors and affiliated theater chains under the Sherman and Clayton Acts for conspiring to give preferential access to new films to certain theaters, resulting in lost profits for the plaintiffs. The jury awarded damages, which the district court trebled, but the court of appeals reversed for insufficient evidence of damages. The Supreme Court held that the evidence was sufficient to support the verdict because the plaintiffs demonstrated injury from the conspiracy, even if the exact amount of damages involved some uncertainty that could be estimated by the jury. The Court reasoned that once legal injury is proven, the risk of uncertainty in quantifying damages falls on the wrongdoer.
The case concerned the constitutionality of federal estate tax provisions under the Revenue Act of 1942 that required inclusion of the full value of marital community property and all life insurance proceeds on the decedent's life in the gross estate of a Louisiana husband upon his death. The district court had ruled for the heirs, finding a due process violation in taxing the wife's share of the community assets. The Supreme Court held that Congress possessed authority under its taxing power to measure the tax by the entire community property at the termination of the marriage by death, that the tax was an excise rather than a direct tax, and that it did not violate uniformity, due process, or Tenth Amendment constraints. The core reasoning rested on the federal government's broad latitude to define the taxable event and base of an estate tax, the historical treatment of community interests, and the lack of any vested right in the surviving spouse that would prevent inclusion of the full value.
The case involved General Tomoyuki Yamashita, commanding general of Japanese forces in the Philippines, who was tried and convicted by a U.S. military commission after World War II for violations of the law of war and sentenced to death. Yamashita sought writs of habeas corpus and prohibition, claiming the commission lacked jurisdiction because it was created after hostilities ceased, the charge failed to allege a war crime, its evidentiary rules violated the Articles of War and the Geneva Convention, and advance notice had not been given to a protecting power. The Supreme Court denied the petitions, ruling that Congress had authorized military commissions to try enemy combatants for law-of-war offenses, that the commission had jurisdiction over both the person and the charge, and that the procedures followed were consistent with the Articles of War and applicable international law. The Court reasoned that military commissions are an established tribunal for such offenses, that the law of war permits trials after surrender, and that the Geneva Convention provisions did not bar the proceedings under the circumstances presented.
The case concerned whether a federal district court had jurisdiction over a suit by the Alien Property Custodian seeking a judgment that he was entitled, under a vesting order issued pursuant to the Trading with the Enemy Act, to the interests of German legatees in a California decedent's estate then being administered in state probate court. The district court ruled it had jurisdiction and entered judgment for the Custodian. The Court of Appeals reversed, holding that the suit was an exercise of probate jurisdiction outside federal authority. The Supreme Court reversed, explaining that federal courts may entertain suits to establish claims against an estate so long as they do not probate the will, administer the estate, or interfere with property in the state court's custody, and that the district court's judgment left the state probate proceedings undisturbed. The Court further held that the district court was not required to decline jurisdiction merely because the case involved state-law issues.