Exam 3: Expressive Freedom and the First Amendment

In New York Times v. United States (1971) the Supreme Court rebuffed the Nixon Administration's attempt to block publication of the __________________.

In Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier (1988), the Supreme Court _________ a public school principal's decision to excise certain controversial material from the school newspaper.

In _______________, the Supreme Court struck down a District of Columbia regulation that prohibited the display of signs within 500 feet of a foreign embassy if the message displayed on the signs brought the embassy's government into "disrepute."

In ______________, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a state statute that increases the severity of punishment if a crime victim is chosen on the basis of race or other designated characteristics.

Despite the importance of the 1st Amendment, the Supreme Court did not begin to give major attention to these rights until after _______.

Is the Supreme Court correct to extend the protections of the First Amendment to commercial speech?

Which should prevail--the right of members of a private country club to associate with whom they wish or the power of a city to require the club to accept African-Americans as members?

As a Supreme Court justice, former Harvard law professor Felix Frankfurter sharply criticized the doctrine that the First Amendment occupies a(an) "__________ position."

In _______________, the Supreme Court recognized that the sidewalks surrounding the Court's own building in Washington, D.C. qualified as a public forum and struck down the federal law forbidding use of that space for picketing or handing out leaflets.

The doctrine of _____________ prohibits laws that do not aim specifically at evils the government has a right to prevent but sweep within their ambit activities that are protected by the First Amendment.

Does an individual have a constitutional right to belong to a white supremacist organization that advocates the reinstitution of slavery? Should this organization be permitted to hold an assembly on the Mall in Washington, D.C. where Martin Luther King, Jr. once addressed a massive civil rights rally?

In Miller v. California (1973) the Supreme Court stated that the "basic guidelines" that the "trier of fact" must follow in an obscenity case include the determination of whether the work in question _____________.

In NAACP v. Alabama (1958), the Supreme Court held that Alabama had infringed the NAACP's __________ by enforcing a law requiring organizations based outside the state to register members' names and addresses.

In Schenck v. United States (1919), Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. first articulated the famous ________________ test.

Consider United States v. The Progressive (1979) and New York Times Company v. United States (1971). Given the holdings in these cases, should national security concerns over "the war on terrorism" outweigh freedom of the press? Justify your answer.

Under the _______________, courts were required in each case to "ask whether the gravity of the 'evil,' discounted by its improbability, justifies such invasion of free speech as is necessary to avoid the danger."

Dissenting in Dennis v. United States (1951), Justice __________________ wrote, "I have always believed that the First Amendment is the keystone of our Government, that the freedoms it guarantees provide the best insurance against destruction of all freedom . . . So long as this Court exercises the power of judicial review of legislation, I cannot agree that the First Amendment permits us to sustain laws suppressing freedom of speech and press on the basis of Congress' or our own notions of mere 'reasonableness.' Such a doctrine waters down the First Amendment so that it amounts to little more than an admonition to Congress."

In ________________, the Supreme Court adhered to its decision in Texas v. Johnson and struck down the Flag Protection Act as applied to flag burning as a means of political protest.

Prior to the mid-1970s, the Supreme Court regarded the regulation of __________ __ as simply an aspect of economic regulation, entitled to no special First Amendment protection.

Is "hate speech" constitutionally protected if it is directed at members of minority groups in the aggregate but not at specific individuals?