The decision of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka on May 17, 1954 is perhaps the most famous of all Supreme Court cases, as it started the process ending segregation. It overturned the equally far-reaching decision of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896.

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to settle the meaning of a 1964 civil rights law that bans discrimination in the workplace based on sex – and, specifically, whether that law protects workers who are gay or lesbian, and those who are transgender.

On April 10, 1967, the United States Supreme Court held oral arguments in a landmark case about a Virginia law that said marriages between blacks and whites should be treated as a felony.

It was on this day in 1963 that the Supreme Court handed down the Gideon decision, which guaranteed the rights of the accused to have a public defender in court.

On March 6, 1857, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in the Dred Scott case, which had a direct impact on the coming of the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln's presidency four years later.

On March 3, 1820, Congress approved the Missouri compromise, a law that maintained a balance in the Senate between free and slave states. The pact only lasted 34 years, and its elimination was one of the contributing factors that led to the Civil War.

In a unanimous ruling on Tuesday, the Supreme Court overturned an Indiana Supreme Court decision that said that part of federal Constitution’s Eighth Amendment didn’t apply to the states.

On February 15, 1879, President Rutherford B. Hayes signed a new law that would admit women as members of the Supreme Court bar and allow them to submit and argue cases at the high court.

On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court handed down a decision that continues to divide the nation to this day.

January 1 is one of the most noteworthy days in American history, marking President Abraham Lincoln’s decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.