This is a list of cases reported in volume 274 of United States Reports, decided by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1927. Justices of the Supreme Court at the time of volume 274 U.S. The Supreme Court is established by Article III, Section 1 of the Constitution of the United States, which says: "The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court . . .". The size of the Court is not specified; the Constitution leaves it to Congress to set the number of justices. Under the Judiciary Act of 1789 Congress originally fixed the number of justices at six (one chief justice and five associate justices). Since 1789, Congress has varied the size of the Court from six to seven, nine, ten, and back to nine justices (always including one chief justice). When the cases in volume 274 were decided the Court comprised the following nine members: Notable Cases in 274 U.S. Buck v. Bell In Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927), the Supreme Court ruled that a state statute permitting compulsory sterilization of the unfit, including the intellectually disabled, "for the protection and health of the state" did not violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Despite the changing attitudes in the coming decades regarding sterilization, the Supreme Court has never expressly overturned Buck v. Bell. It was widely believed to have been slightly weakened by Skinner v. Oklahoma 316 U.S. 535 (1942), which involved compulsory sterilization of male habitual criminals (and came to a contrary result). Whitney v. California In Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357 (1927), the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a person who had engaged in speech that raised a threat to society. The question before the court was whether the 1919 Criminal Syndicalism Act of California violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses. The Court unanimously upheld Whitney's conviction; holding that the state, in exercise of its police power, has the power to punish those who abuse their rights to freedom of speech "by utterances inimical to the public welfare, tending to incite crime, disturb the public peace, or endanger the foundations of organized government and threaten its overthrow." In other words, words with a "bad tendency" can be punished. United States v. Lee United States v. Lee, 274 U.S. 559 (1927), is