present rights
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 373 U.S. 526 - Watson v. City of Memphis · 1963Most cited · 580 citing opinions
The rights here asserted are, like all such rights, present rights; they are not merely hopes to some future enjoyment of some formalistic constitutional promise. The basic guarantees of our Constitution are warrants for the here and now and, unless there is an overwhelmingly compelling reason, they are to be promptly fulfilled.
How often courts cite the case defining “present rights”
Court decisions citing the opinion that defined “present rights” — 580 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining case as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.