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These later decisions have fashioned the principle that the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action. [4]
Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969), is a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court interpreting the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. [1] The Court held that the government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless that speech is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action".
Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment (and therefore may be restricted) include obscenity, fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, speech that violates intellectual property law, true threats, false statements of fact, and commercial ...
The trial judge read that law as applying only to words tending to cause a breach of the peace. So construed, the Supreme Court said, the law was consistent with the First Amendment.
During colonial times, English speech regulations were rather restrictive.The English criminal common law of seditious libel made criticizing the government a crime. Lord Chief Justice John Holt, writing in 1704–1705, explained the rationale for the prohibition: "For it is very necessary for all governments that the people should have a good opinion of it."
Ohio in 1969, in which the Supreme Court held that "the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."
Under Brandenburg, even advocacy of criminal conduct is constitutionally protected unless it is "directed" at inciting "imminent lawless action" and "likely" to do so—an exception to the First ...
If a state seeks to impose an injunction in the face of a substantial claim of First Amendment rights, it must provide strict procedural safeguards, including immediate appellate review. Absent such immediate review, the appellate court must grant a stay of any lower court order restricting the exercise of speech and assembly rights.