There are a handful of landmark Supreme Court cases that Americans can cite by name. Roe v. Wade, Brown v. Board of Education, Miranda v. Arizona and Bush v. Gore are among the cases whose names are as well known as their rulings. There are other cases whose holdings are well known even though their names are not.
President Obama was in Ohio this week, speaking in the Cleveland area about the state of the nation’s economy. He surprised reporters (and no doubt Congressional Republicans as well) when he announced that he was appointing former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray as head of the new federal consumer financial protection bureau.
Isoruku Yamamoto was 59 years old when he died in April of 1943. For the previous four years he had served as commander in chief of the combined fleet of Japan. In that capacity he had developed a plan to make a pre-emptive strike on the United States to draw down American naval power. He planned and led the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 in which 2,402 men were killed– the worst attack ever on American soil by a foreign force. Americans rallied to a common cause, rebuilt and fought back.