Every indexed document

suggesting that the Stanley decision wasn’t relevant to a movie theater. He told me about his grandmother who “once went to a movie entitled Sur Les Troits de Paris. She thought it was a travelogue. She didn’t after she got there of course…...

” but I argued that there was no real difference between possession and exhibition:

individual decision to go to a movie theater and there to satisfy his intellectual and emotional needs in the company exclusively of voluntary people

I was concerned that he would remember the incident we had when I turned down his invitation to speak at his restricted club

a challenge to the constitutionality of a state statute could be brought in front of a three judge district court with the right to appeal its ruling directly to the Supreme Court. The criteria for bringing such a challenge

I decided to argue that it was none of the government’s constitutional business to act as a board of censors—to tell its adult citizens what they could and could not watch in the privacy of a movie theater that was off limits to children an...

the uttering of the prohibited words on a Pacifica radio station that broadcast Carlin’s routine led to a Supreme Court decision setting out standards for what could and could not be said during certain hours of the day and night.

the comedian George Carlin listed the seven words that could never be uttered on radio or television. The list included such innocent words as “piss” and “tits.” (Use your imagination for the other 5!)

show or publish often carries a heavy price tag. As kids

I concluded with the following plea: “Let us hear no more nonsensical analogies to shouting fire in a crowded

those advocating censorship have cited a state supreme court that held that “Holmes’ aphorism . . . applies with equal force to pornography.” Another court analogized “picketing . . . in support of a secondary boycott” to shouting “Fire!” b...

offering the patrons a leaflet advising them that in his opinion the theater was a fire hazard

“the First Amendment recognizes no such thing as a ‘false’ idea.” Nor does it recognize false opinions about the causes of war.

finding that the pamphlet created “a clear and present danger” of hindering the war effort while our soldiers were fighting for their lives and our liberty.

“The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater

in saying all that was said in the circular

who was the general secretary of the Socialist Party in Philadelphia. In 1917 a jury found Schenck guilty of attempting to cause insubordination among soldiers who had been drafted to fight in the First World War. He had circulated leaflets...

I will recount my experiences—both professional and personal—with each of those purported exceptions to the First Amendment. I will describe how the First Amendment has changed over the half century I have been litigating freedom of express...

as with obscenity which may offend and also cause violence against women

and other information that the government or individuals may have a right to keep from the public. It may also include disclosure of personal information that may embarrass individuals.