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Civil Liberties: First Amendment Rights

Explore the complexities of First Amendment rights, focusing on freedom of speech and press, including landmark cases, societal challenges, and government limitations. Delve into issues of prior restraint, public nuisances, national security concerns, and obscenity in the context of protecting free speech. Learn about the delicate balance between allowing free expression and setting boundaries to safeguard the community.

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Civil Liberties: First Amendment Rights

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  1. PSCI 110125 Sept 2007 Civil Liberties: First Amendment Rights Freedom of speech Freedom of the press

  2. Free speech challenges:1978 petition by an American Nazi group to stage a rally in Skokie, Illinois U.S. Court of Appeals decision: “When a choice must be made, it is better to allow those who preach racial hate to expend their venom in rhetoric rather than to be panicked into embarking on a dangerous course of permitting the government to decide what its citizens must say and hear.”

  3. Freedom of the Press Are there limits to government protection of a free press? Problems for government: 1. prior restraint (or censorship) 2. subsequent punishment

  4. Freedom of the Press Challenging issues: 1. public nuisances 2. national security 3. obscenity

  5. 1st Amendment, Free Press Case Near v. Minnesota(1931)At issue: prior restraint of “nuisance newspapers” * * * * *Chief Justice Hughes (1931): “Some degree of abuse is inseparable from the proper use of everything, and in no instance is this more true than in that of the press. It has accordingly been decided by the practice of the States, that it is better to leave a few of its noxious branches to their luxuriant growth, than, by pruning them away, to injure the vigour of those yielding proper fruits.”

  6. 1st Amendment, Free Press Case National security and the press: conflicting lessons from the Bay of Pigs ► The press might broaden perspective, yielding better decisions ► Is censorship justified in cases of “clear and present danger”?

  7. 1st Amendment, Free Press Case Obscenity and the courts: not protected

  8. 1st Amendment, Free Press Case Testing for obscenity: ◙ prurient interest test ◙ patently offensive test ◙ utterly without redeeming social importance test ◙ LAPS test (does not have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value)

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