Chaplinksy V. New HampshireEssay Preview: Chaplinksy V. New HampshireReport this essayChaplinksy v. New Hampshire was a case that established the fighting words doctrine. Chaplinksy was arrested under a state law that prohibited offensive and derisive speech. Court upheld the arrest. I will discuss what elements of this case were the reasons that court decided that a limitation on the First Amendment was justified in his case. Court also used this case in subsequent cases to determine the limitations on free speech.
In Terminiello v. Chicago, took place in 1949, the Supreme Court elaborated on the idea of free speech and its potential to cause unrest and conflicts. It acknowledges that these are acceptable consequences and not enough to to limit the free speech. I think that the court was beginning to appear more in opposotion in holding a conviction by limiting free speech without a strong case. Terminiello spoke in a very large crowd and angered many groups of people causing an unrest among them. I will also discuss the relevance of Chaplisnky v. New Hampshire in this case and yet another modification to the Clear and Present Danger doctrine.
The 1964 case, New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, was the case that established a standard for actual malice. This standard required the plaintiff to prove that the statements were false or made with bad intentions. This made it more difficult for those who criticized government officials or public figures to drag to court or win a case without sufficient supporting evidence. I think that this is one of the more important cases that defined the standards of what is protected and what is not. In the past, there had been cases were a conviction were upheld without an acceptable proof from the plaintiff, where as now they must prove that the defendant is indeed a case that a conviction should be upheld and their activity is not protected by the First Amendment.
The statute of limitations also requires that the defendant’s first court of appeal or decision to enter a nonjury claim need not be vacated. The statute also requires that a plaintiff be a party to the claim unless it is proved that the defendant intentionally took any action that did not have to be taken to prevent it from being upheld. Although one can argue that we need not apply the statute of limitations statute to those occasions in which some of the facts that led to a trial were known, I am not willing to argue that, as these courts have consistently used it, we need not apply it to those such as those discussed above.
3. The New York Times Co. v. Sullivan case
The most recent case that the Supreme Court has recognized is New York Times Co., Inc. v. Sullivan, a case that is now before the Court of Appeals. This case involved the actions of two New York Times journalists. When the editors of the New York Times, and their editor, David Sorensen, called a reporter to ask her a question about a possible attack on their New Year’s Resolutions, she refused to answer for fear that her questions were too simple. Although the journalists were not the subject of the conversation as they were told, they did accuse a New York Times producer that morning of doing something they did not agree with. As a result, New York Times reporter John McClain suffered a permanent mental impairment, and she subsequently found herself permanently mentally incapacitated. She lost a bid to have her retrial reversed. In October 1964, after the trial had ended, John McClain appealed and in January 1966 the Supreme Court of Appeals dismissed the conviction for defamation. The court found the article’s editor in error, and said that “there is no evidence that the defendant and his staff had been aware of Ms. McClain’s mental impairment until the moment the article was written.” Justice Kennedy held, in a majority judgment, that:
“In the course of the trial [in August 1964] I found that Mr. McClain’s refusal to produce documents and to respond to Ms. McClain’s questions about the article was not a breach of his right to due process, or of other constitutional rights. I also found that Ms. McClain gave the story, and the editors at the New York Times, and the paper editors at the New York Times, and the editors at the New York Times in general, and at our colleagues at the New York Times, the right to print whatever is required under what is called the ‘rules'” (internal quotation marks omitted):
“[I]f the circumstances have been known to me, [the right to print] can be inferred from what the newspaper and the editors of the paper, the fact-checking and political commentator as such at the time, have told me, and even from the facts themselves: that I might have the right to print and answer any questions that I might please. It is very dangerous to be under such a condition and to have your rights under such terms as to withhold from the press