Cohens v. Virginia
United States Supreme Court case
Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. (6 Wheat.) 264 (1821), is a landmark case by the Supreme Court of the United States that asserts the Court's power to review state supreme court decisions in criminal law matters if defendants claim that their constitutional rights have been violated. The Court had previously asserted a similar jurisdiction over civil cases involving U.S. parties (see Martin v. Hunter's Lessee).
The defendants were members of a prominent Baltimore banking family. A U.S. senator and two U.S. representatives served as attorneys for the opposing sides. The two defendants, Mendes I. Cohen and Philip I. Cohen, would later rise to the positions of U.S. Army Colonel and Maryland Delegate (Mendes), and U.S. Postmaster (Philip).
Background
Congress passed a bill to establish a National Lottery to raise money for the District of Columbia that was conducted by the municipal government. Meanwhile, Virginia had established its own state lotteries and passed a law to prohibit the sale of out-of-state lottery tickets.
Philip and Mendes Cohen were brothers and managed the Norfolk, Virginia, branch of Cohens Lottery and Exchange Office of Baltimore, Maryland.
“Cohens v. Virginia” enters the record as united States Supreme Court case. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Cohens, Virginia and United can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Cohens v. Virginia” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Cohens, Virginia and United provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5141336. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1821.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cohens v. Virginia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.