Federal Laws, Amendments, and Court Cases That Keep Reappearing

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Use this table for fast chronology checks. Each entry is a fact you should be able to place in sequence and use in an argument. Return to the chapter when you need the fuller context.

DATE	LAW / AMENDMENT	WHAT IT PROVES
1787	Northwest Ordinance	Territorial governance; equal statehood; slavery prohibited in the Northwest Territory.
1791	Bill of Rights	Civil liberties and federalism response to ratification concerns.
1820	Missouri Compromise	Missouri slave, Maine free; slavery restricted north of latitude 36°30′ in remaining Louisiana Purchase territory except Missouri.
1830	Indian Removal Act	Federal authorization for removal treaties and southeastern Native displacement.
1850	Compromise of 1850 / Fugitive Slave Act	California free; territorial questions reorganized; stronger federal fugitive-slave enforcement.
1854	Kansas-Nebraska Act	Popular sovereignty; repeal of the Missouri restriction; accelerates sectional conflict and party realignment.
1862	Homestead Act / Pacific Railway Acts	Federal land and subsidy policy accelerates western settlement and infrastructure.
1865	13th Amendment	Abolishes slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States except as punishment for crime after due conviction.
1868	14th Amendment	National citizenship; due process; equal protection.
1870	15th Amendment	Bars the federal government and states from denying or abridging citizens’ voting rights on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. It did not prohibit sex-based voting restrictions.
1882	Chinese Exclusion Act	Major federal nationality-based labor immigration restriction.
1887	Interstate Commerce Act / Dawes Act	Federal railroad regulation; Native allotment and assimilation policy.
1890	Sherman Antitrust Act	Federal antitrust authority; early enforcement limited and sometimes used against labor.
1913	16th / 17th Amendments	Federal income tax; direct election of senators.
1919–1920	18th / 19th Amendments	Prohibition; women’s suffrage.
1924	Immigration Act	National-origins quota regime and intensified restriction.
1935	Social Security Act / Wagner Act	Federal social insurance; collective-bargaining protections and the NLRB.
1947	Taft-Hartley Act	Constrains union practices and permits state right-to-work laws.
1954	Brown v. Board	Rejects state-mandated school segregation under Equal Protection.
1964	Civil Rights Act	Public accommodations, employment, and federal civil-rights enforcement.
1965	Voting Rights Act / Immigration and Nationality Act	Federal voting-rights enforcement; ends the national-origins quota system.
1973	War Powers Resolution	Congressional effort to constrain presidential military commitments after Vietnam.
1996	Welfare reform	Replaces the AFDC entitlement structure with TANF block grants and work requirements.
2001–2002	USA PATRIOT Act / Homeland Security Act	Post-9/11 surveillance, investigation, and security reorganization.
2010	Affordable Care Act	Major expansion and restructuring of federal health-insurance policy.