AP Gov Supreme Court Case Quiz

Obscenity is ‘utterly without redeeming social importance’ Defined obscenity as when the “average person, applying contemporary community standards, finds it appeals to prurient interest”

Roth v. U.S

Does a public school ban on students wearing armbands in symbolic, political protest violate a student’s 1st Amendment freedom of speech?

Tinker v. Des Moines

Reasoning:

Right to symbolic speech overrode concerns for a potential disorder Violated the content neutral criterion of the time, place, and manner test Schools may control actions which materially or substantially interfere with a school’s operations and its central mission, teaching students.

Tinker v Des Moines

Tinker Decision

Tinker, 7-2

Whether obscenity is utterance within the area of protected speech and press?

Roth v. U.S

Issue: Obscenity laws

Roth v. U.S

Issue: Symbolic Speech

Tinker v. Des Moines

Whether the state courts properly found that the motion picture involved, a French film called ‘Les Amants’ (The Lovers), was obscene and hence not entitled to the protection for free expression that is guaranteed by the 1st and 14th amendments?

Jacobellis v. Ohio

Know it when he sees it- Obscenity

Jacobellis v. Ohio

Whether the 1st and 14th Amendments permit a public official to recover damages in a libel action for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves that the statement was made with ‘actual malice’-that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.

New York Times Co v. Sullivan

Whether, and under what precise constitutional standards, states could regulate and prohibit the distribution of obscene materials without violating the 1st Amendment.

Miller v. California

Obscenity laws are limited to “hard core pornography,” famously stating, ‘I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.’ Reflected the court difficulty in articulating a precise, workable standard for obscenity.

Jacobellis v. Ohio

Protecting obscenity with stronger qualifications

Miller v California

Court emphasized the "profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open” which “may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials” Erroneous statements are inevitable in free debate, and the first amendment requires “breathing space” for speech, especially on matters of public concern like civil rights. Established the “actual malice” standard for public figures.

New York Times Co v. Sullivan

War-time freedom of speech

Schenck v. U.S

Whether the words used in the defendants’ leaflets, circulated during wartime to urge resistance to the military draft, were used in such circumstances and were of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they would bring about the substantive evils that Congress has the right to prevent.

Schenck v. U.S

Whether, and under what precise constitutional standard, the government may constitutionally prohibit or punish advocacy of the use of force, violence, crime, or law violation as a means of accomplishing political or industrial reform, without violating the 1st and 14th amendments.

Brandenburg v Ohio

• Reaffirmed that obscenity is not protected by the 1st

• Established the new three prong Miller test:

• Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find the work, taken as a whole, appeals to prurient interest.

• Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value (a national “reasonable person” standard, not community based)

• Whether the work depicts or describes sexual conduct in a patently offensive way

Miller v California

“The character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done” “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man from falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing panic.” The question in every case is whether the words are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.

Schenck v. U.S

Whether the system of informal censorship practiced by the Rhode Island commission to encourage morality in youth, through notices declaring certain publications “objectionable” for youth,, requesting distributor cooperation under implied threats of prosecution and police referral, without any provision for notice, hearing or judicial review, constitutes an unconstitutional prior administrative restraint that abridges freedoms of speech and press protected by the first amendment via the 14th.

Bantam books v. Sullivan

The constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a state to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of free

Brandenburg v. Ohio

Government must show “grave and irreparable” harm, with evidence of direct, immediate threats in order to exercise prior restraint.

Bantam Books v Sullivan

Whether a Minnesota statute, which authorized courts to enjoin and abate as a public nuisance any “malicious, scandalous and defamatory” newspaper, magazine, or periodical through prior restrain, violated the liberty of the press guaranteed by the first amendment, as incorporated against the states through the fourteen amendment’s due process clause.

Near v. Minnesota