NAACP v. Button

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NAACP v. Button
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued November 8, 1961 Reargued October 9, 1962 Decided January 14, 1963
Full case name	National Association for the Advancement of Colored People v. Button, Attorney General of Virginia, et al.
Citations	371 U.S. 415 (more) 83 S. Ct. 328; 9 L. Ed. 2d 405; 1963 U.S. LEXIS 2398
Case history
Prior	NAACP v. Harrison, 202 Va. 142; 116 S.E.2d 55 (1960); cert. granted, 365 U.S. 842 (1961).
Holding
Virginia laws on barratry, champerty, and maintenance violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
Court membership
Chief Justice Earl Warren Associate Justices Hugo Black · William O. Douglas Tom C. Clark · John M. Harlan II William J. Brennan Jr. · Potter Stewart Byron White · Arthur Goldberg
Case opinions
Majority	Brennan, joined by Warren, Black, Douglas, Goldberg
Concurrence	Douglas
Concur/dissent	White
Dissent	Harlan, joined by Clark, Stewart
Laws applied
U.S. Const. Amend. I; XIV

NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415 (1963), is a ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States which held that the reservation of jurisdiction by a federal district court did not bar the U.S. Supreme Court from reviewing a state court's ruling, and also overturned certain laws enacted by the state of Virginia in 1956 as part of the Stanley Plan and massive resistance, as violating the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.^[1] The statutes struck down by the Supreme Court (and one overturned by the Virginia Supreme Court after the 1959 remand in Harrison v. NAACP) had expanded the definitions of the traditional common law crimes of champerty and maintenance, as well as barratry, and had been targeted at the NAACP and its civil rights litigation.