First Amendment, Torts, Hate Speech, and Obscenity Law

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering privacy torts, hate speech, First Amendment doctrine, damages, and obscenity standards based on constitutional law lecture notes.

Compensatory Damages

Damages awarded in a civil lawsuit intended to make the injured party whole by covering out-of-pocket expenses.

Punitive Damages

Monetary damages designed to punish a wrongdoer and make an example of them so others will not follow; they cannot be awarded against public officials or public figures, and private citizens must prove malice to receive them.

False Light

A privacy tort occurring when published information is technically true, but presented in a slanted or embellished way that creates a false and misleading impression.

Time v. Hill

A false light case involving a family held hostage whose story was embellished by Time magazine; established that plaintiffs originally had to prove actual malice, though private individuals today need only prove negligence.

Woods v. Hustler

A case in which stolen nude photographs of Lujuana Wood were published with a fabricated caption; the court found liability for false light and disclosure of private facts, conflicting with prior precedent permitting publication of legally acquired information.

Intentional Infliction of Mental Duress (IIMD)

A tort claim alleging severe emotional harm caused by deliberate and outrageous conduct, evaluated under First Amendment limits in speech and press cases.

Falwell v. Hustler

A Supreme Court case ruling that a public figure suing for intentional infliction of mental duress over a parody or satire (such as Hustler's mock Campari ad) must show actual malice; parodic cartoons carry no assertion of factual truth.

Milkovich v. Lorain County Press

A case ruling that an editorial or statement framed as opinion remains actionable for defamation if it contains an underlying assertion of fact.

Snyder v. Phelps

A Supreme Court decision holding that Westboro Baptist Church picketers at a military funeral were protected by the First Amendment against claims of intentional infliction of mental duress because the speech addressed matters of public interest in a public forum.

Hulk Hogan v. Gawker

A lawsuit where Hulk Hogan sued Gawker for invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of mental duress after the publication of a sex tape, winning a $151\text{ million}$ verdict (settled for $31\text{ million}$) bankrolled by Peter Thiel.

Group Libel

A legal concept recognized in Beauharnais v. Illinois allowing individuals to be punished for defaming or libeling an entire defined group.

Fighting Words

Speech intended to deliberately provoke an immediate breach of the peace, defined under Chaplinsky v. N.H. as generic, unprotected utterances rather than content-qualified categories.

R.A.V. v. St. Paul

A Supreme Court decision overturning a bias-motivated crime ordinance against cross burning because the statute was unconstitutionally overbroad and under-inclusive, impermissibly targeting only specific content categories (race, religion, color, creed, gender).

Wisconsin v. Mitchell

A case in which the Supreme Court upheld enhanced criminal sentencing penalties for defendants who intentionally select victims based on race, color, religion, creed, or gender, ruling the law regulates discriminatory conduct rather than speech.

Specific Intent Crime

A more serious criminal offense requiring the prosecution to prove both the physical act and a particular accompanying state of mind or intent (such as discriminatory motive in penalty enhancement).

General Intent Crime

A less serious category of criminal offense where proof of a specific subjective state of mind is not required, requiring only that the defendant knowingly performed the act.

Virginia v. Black

A ruling establishing that cross burning can be banned when carried out with a proven intent to intimidate an individual, but a statute cannot treat cross burning as per se evidence of intimidation because it can also constitute political speech.

Dawson v. Delaware

A Supreme Court ruling holding that a convicted defendant's prison escape sentence could not be enhanced based on their membership in the Aryan Brotherhood because that belief was not relevant to the crime.

Barclay v. Florida

An antecedent case to Wisconsin v. Mitchell where the Supreme Court permitted a defendant's racial motivation to be considered during sentencing because it was directly relevant to the committed murder.

Hicklin Rule

An early obscenity legal standard dating from the Comstock era permitting material to be suppressed if isolated passages had a tendency to deprave or corrupt minors.

Roth Rule

A 1950s obscenity test requiring the dominant theme of a work, taken as a whole, to appeal to the prurient interest of the average adult based on a national community standard.

Miller v. California

The 1973 Supreme Court decision establishing the current three-prong obscenity test: appealing to prurient interest under local community standards, depicting specific prohibited sexual acts, and lacking serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific merit.

First Presidential Commission on Pornography

A commission authorized under President Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) whose report was rejected by Richard Nixon; it found adult entertainment was associated with lower sex crime rates and asserted children could not serve as the standard for adult material.

Meese Commission

The second presidential commission on pornography, which focused on violent material and concluded that exposure to violent porn desensitizes viewers, promotes acceptance of violent behavior, and increases real-world violence.

Barnes v. Glen Theatre

A Supreme Court ruling holding that states may regulate conduct by banning public nude dancing and requiring dancers to wear pasties and G-strings.

American Booksellers v. Hudnut

A ruling invalidating an Indianapolis anti-pornography ordinance based on MacKinnon-Dworkin feminist theories; the court held that defining pornography as the sex-based subordination of women was an unconstitutional content-based speech restriction.

New York v. Ferber

A landmark case establishing that governments have a compelling state interest to prohibit the production, distribution, and possession of child pornography because children cannot give consent and the material constitutes child abuse.

Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition

A Supreme Court decision ruling that virtual or computer-generated sexually explicit images depicting what appears to be minors cannot be outlawed under child pornography laws because actual children are not used or harmed.

Stanley v. Georgia

A Supreme Court ruling establishing that the private possession of obscene material inside one's own home is constitutionally protected under the right to privacy.

Osborne v. Ohio

A Supreme Court ruling creating an exception to Stanley v. Georgia, holding that the right to privacy in the home does not protect the possession of child pornography due to the overriding state interest in protecting children.