This is a list of cases reported in volume 261 of United States Reports, decided by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1923. Justices of the Supreme Court at the time of volume 261 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 261 were decided the Court comprised the following nine members: Notable cases in 261 U.S. Moore v. Dempsey In Moore v. Dempsey, 261 U.S. 86 (1923), the Supreme Court held that the African-American defendants' mob-dominated trials deprived them of due process guaranteed by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It reversed the U.S. district court's decision declining the petitioners' writ of habeas corpus. This case was a precedent for the Supreme Court's review of state criminal trials in terms of their compliance with the Bill of Rights. Moore is a significant precedent for wider use of federal writs of habeas corpus to review state court convictions that occurred under conditions abridging federal constitutional rights. It marked the beginning of stricter scrutiny by the Supreme Court of state criminal trials in terms of their compliance with the Bill of Rights. This ruling reduced the capacity of a local community "to permanently deprive or deny the rights of those who might be prosecuted in its courts." United States v. Thind United States v. Thind, 261 U.S. 204 (1923), is a Supreme Court decision that Bhagat Singh Thind, an Indian Sikh man who identified himself as an Aryan, was ineligible for naturalized citizenship in the United States. Thind had filed a petition for naturalization under the Naturalization Act of 1906 which allowed only "free white persons" and "aliens of African nativity and persons of African descent" to become United States citizens by naturalization. After his petition was granted, government attorneys initiated a proceeding to cancel