First Amendment

Howard Dean’s First Amendment. By Jim Geraghty

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/446995/ann-coulter-berkeley-speech-howard-dean-dubious-legal-argument-fighting-words?utm_source=jolt&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Jolt_4/25/2017&utm_term=Jolt

Excerpt: Dean cites three court cases, and he mischaracterizes the decisions in all of them. The first case he references, Snyder v. Phelps, was an 8 to 1 decision in favor of the Westboro Baptist Church’s freedom to chant the horrible slogans and hold up the horrible banners it favors at a military funeral. If the church is free to protest at a military funeral, it makes no sense to argue that Ann Coulter is not free to give a speech at Berkeley. Dean is perhaps unknowingly citing a case that argues the reverse of his position. The second case Dean cites, Virginia v. Black, struck down a state law that deemed cross-burning a prima facie attempt at intimidation. The decision was complicated, with multiple justices concurring in part and dissenting in part, but its upshot was that if prosecutors wanted to charge someone with a crime for burning a cross, they had to prove that the cross-burner intended his action as a threat.