Clarence Brandenburg, a Ku Klux Klan leader in rural Ohio, contacted a reporter at a Cincinnati television station and invited him to cover a KKK rally. Brandenburg was charged with advocating violence under Ohio’s criminal syndicalism statute for his participation in the rally and for the speech he made. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed Brandenburg’s conviction.
About Brandenburg v. Ohio in brief
Clarence Brandenburg, a Ku Klux Klan leader in rural Ohio, contacted a reporter at a Cincinnati television station and invited him to cover a KKK rally. Brandenburg was charged with advocating violence under Ohio’s criminal syndicalism statute for his participation in the rally and for the speech he made. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed Brandenburg’s conviction, holding that government cannot constitutionally punish abstract advocacy of force or law violation. In the process, Whitney v. California was explicitly overruled, and doubt was cast on Schenck v. United States, Abrams v. United States, Gitlow v. New York and Dennis v. United States. 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. The majority opinion was per curiam, issued from the Court as an institution, rather than as authored and signed by an individual justice. It articulated a new test for judging what was then referred to as’seditious speech’ under the First Amendment: Whitney has been discredited by later constitutional decisions, at 49, 507, 497 at 507.
These decisions have fashioned constitutional decisions that do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe the use of the press or of the law to permit free speech and press use of force. In a case dealing with alleged Communists, it may be constitutionally prohibited for a prosecution under the Smith Act of the United States to deal with the alleged Communists under the case of Dennis v U States, 513 U. S. 444 (1962). In the case with the Nazis, it was prohibited for the prosecution of alleged Nazis under the alleged Smith Act, 514 U. s. 444 (1966). In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that the prosecution under Smith Act was not a violation of First Amendment rights, but of the Second Amendment rights to freedom of expression. The case was decided in favor of the Nazis.
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This page is based on the article Brandenburg v. Ohio published in Wikipedia (as of Feb. 03, 2021) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
