{"id":302,"date":"2003-07-30T07:12:54","date_gmt":"2003-07-30T15:12:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2003\/07\/30\/yelling-fuck-in-a-crowded-theatre\/"},"modified":"2003-07-30T07:12:54","modified_gmt":"2003-07-30T15:12:54","slug":"yelling-fuck-in-a-crowded-theatre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=302","title":{"rendered":"Yelling Fuck in a Crowded Theatre"},"content":{"rendered":"
The state has the power to protect its citizenry from actual harm, and thus has the power to outlaw one yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theatre. See, Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919)<\/i>. However, yelling “Fuck!” in a crowded theatre does not create a clear and present danger to anyone and thus cannot be outlawed. Although they are both four letter words that start with F, the distinction is constitutionally significant.<\/div>\n

That’s quoted from Colorado public defender Eric Vanatta’s legal brief defending a high school student who was charged with disorderly conduct for swearing at the principal (via Calpundit<\/a>). Despite the fact that five months remain in the year, The Smoking Gun <\/a>has given this brief the 2003 legal document of the year award. Go ahead and read the whole brief <\/a>– it’s a very rewarding and somewhat silly examination of the F-word.<\/p>\n

That said, I do have a quibble with the passage quoted above. Like so many people, Mr. Vanatta gets the cliche wrong: it’s perfectly legal to yell “Fire!” in a crowded theatre. What’s illegal is falsely <\/i>yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theatre (Justice Holmes’ exact quote is, “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.”). The distinction is, as Mr. Vanatta says, constitutionally significant.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, Schenck<\/i><\/a> – the case the “falsely yelling fire in a theatre” quote comes from – is one of the most appalling attacks on free speech in Supreme Court history, in which the Court turned logic on its head to argue that arresting people for peacefully distributing anti-war pamphlets did not <\/i>violate the first amendment. It’s ironic, and annoying, that the Supreme Court case most often quoted in defense of free speech was actually defending the opposite principle..<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The state has the power to protect its citizenry from actual harm, and thus has the power to outlaw one yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theatre. See, Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919). However, yelling “Fuck!” in a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-free-speech-censorship-copyright-law-etc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}