So everyone agrees it’s kosher for Columbia to gift Ahmadinejad a world stage to spew genocidal hate, but some punk kids hang a couple of nooses from a tree in LA (that kids of all colors were goofing and playing on shortly thereafter) and it’s a hate crime? Please, fight my ignorance of the 1st Amendment.
Obviously a lot of people don’t agree with Columbia inviting him to speak, however the university is not a branch of the US government and thus this is pretty much not a 1st amendment issue. In addition, unless you’ve got an advanced copy of the speech it’s a bit premature to accuse Ahmedinijad of spewing genocidal hatred at Columbia. IANAL but I’m pretty sure that even on public land the 1st amendment would not allow Ahmedinijad to be banned from speaking because of what he might say.
(Note - I’m Jewish and I don’t like the man. I think he’s a vicious nasty turd)
As far as the “Jena 6” case goes, I’m unaware that anyone has been charged with a hate crime for hanging nooses in that tree, however since that happened at a public school it may be governed by local, state or federal laws. We don’t have an absolute right to say anything that we want in this country without legal penalty (yelling fire in a crowded theater, slander, etc).
There are also differences between saying something that upsets a lot of people (“I sure do hate them Jews”) and explicitly advocating violence (“Let’s go kill us some Jews right now”).
This seems more like a debate than a general question, but here goes:
Ahmedinijad is not a US citizen so his right to free speech is not at issue. Columbia is a private university and can host anyone to speak there that they want - again, not really a 1st amendment issue. If he were to incite violence directly then perhaps the specifics of 1st amendment law would come into it.
As far as Jena, AL goes - specific symbolic acts have been defined as tantamount to provocations to violence (burning crosses, nooses, etc…). Also, I’m pretty sure that students on a school campus do not have the same 1st amendment rights that “normal” citizens do (see cases involving school newspapers, for example). Finally, I don’t remember hearing that they were charge with anything, much less a hate crime.
In short, neither of your cases really have much to do with the first amendment and are not in any way analogous, as far as I can tell. Your specific political point, if any, should probably be addressed in GD.
On preview, I see that Valgard has stated most of what I said.
In one of the more famous Supreme Court rulings, Oliver Wendall Holmes wrote :
It’s easy to see why the nooses would not be protected under the first amendment. The nooses, being symbols of execution, imply “You should DIE!” Congress obviously has the right to prevent murder.
The nooses are an implied threat. That’s why they’re not protected.
I thought I read that the morons riding around with a noose hanging out of their truck driving past protesters were charged with inciting a riot, and something about contributing to the delinquency of a minor (he had a 16 year old passenger with him). But nothing about the noose itself as being a threat of killing someone. Although you could easily correlate the two (threat of death and inciting a riot), I’m willing to bet the noose was more to piss people off then to actually kill someone that day with the noose. I guess what I’m trying to get at, is that you shouldn’t be charged with displaying a noose itself, although you should be willing to accept the consequences of doing so morally and socially.
The question isn’t about who should be charged with what, it’s about whether or not the first amendment applies. It doesn’t cover the nooses, regardless of intent. Intention to cause a scene? nope. Intention to convey a threat? nope.
I just can’t think of why the nooses could possibly be covered by freedom of speech.
Actually, the Op leaves it pretty open to both as quoted below. First the issue of displaying nooses from a tree = a hate crime, and then the issue of the 1st Amendment.
Add to that the atmosphere of the New South, where nooses only mean one thing and bring disgust to the general populace. I think all these young men (in both altercations) were just behaving stupidly (as boys will do) but the ramifications of their actions cut their elders in ways that the young ones cannot understand.
Jas is onto something else, as well. Juveniles are not afforded the legal rights of adults. They are in a limbo between child and adult. Adults are afforded protections which juveniles are not.
Um, ParentalAdvisory, reread the title and the last seven words of the OP.
Why say “gift?” What’s wrong with “give?”
Ok, I guess what I was saying was that in the story I read, the driver of the truck was charged with causing a scene (inciting a riot), and not really charged with a hate crime at all (yet). Although Mayor Jacques Roy in the link stated they were going to see if what was (I assume the display of the noose) could be a hate crime… aside from the DUI, delinquency of a minor, and inciting a riot charges. Now if it can’t be considered a hate crime, is that because of local laws, or a 1st Amendment issue? Meaning if they cannot follow through and charge him, is that because of a freedom of speech issue? Most people don’t like the Confederate flag, but they’re free to display it right? The same goes for a Swastika. Is that covered under freedom of speech? Where is the line drawn for what can, and cannot be displayed? And who decides when and where it can be displayed in public?
snip
Local laws. I really wish you would stop trying to highjack this thing into a “hate crime” discussion. Whether or not something is a hate crime or simply “disturbing the peace” has absolutely nothing to do with the first amendment.
The ruling I quoted earlier isn’t that complicated. It lays out the exceptions to Freedom of Speech. Everything is kosher except acts of speech that are intended to cause abject civil disorder (yelling fire in a crowded theater) or a threat to another citizen (“I will kill you!” is not protected speech).
Slander, libel, defamation, lies, damn lies, and statistics are all hunky dory. There are laws that cover those, but the first amendment is irrelevant to that.
The KKK can say that Obama sodomizes puppies, and they’re protected. He could sue the hell out of him for libel, but again, that’s irrelevant. What they can’t do is threaten him.
Hmmm… it’s way early here, but this looks very much like something halfway between GD and the Pit, even though it’s housed in GQ. So, a GQ answer:
The First Amendment simply prohibits Congress from abridging the freedom of speech. In practice, there are three variations on this theme that are worth noting:
[ul][li]First, it’s been held from earliest times that what Congress is prohibited from doing in terms of infringement on rights also holds to the President, his Administration, and the court system, save where they have a defined power that would include the ability to do so, since if there is no constitutionally defined authority for a Federal agency to do something, it must be either prohibited or within the gift of Congress, which is prohibited from granting it. The exceptions would include things like regulating what may be legitimately said within a courtroom where a court is in session, what may be legitimately said by a soldier or sailor on active duty, etc.[/li][li]Congress attempts to carve out territory where the individual freedom of speech is without social value and may therefore be barred or regulated. Obscenity/pornography is one large area where this is debated; hate speech (however defined) is another. It would take some long essays to discuss how the courts have regarded these claims.[/li][li]Finally, the First Amendment is regarded as defining several rights of citizens of the United States. The Fourteenth Amendment therefore prohibits the states from abridging those rights.[/li][li]Notice that none of the above regulates what a private non-governmental entity may or may not do, nor does it grant immunity from civil action. Neither the Federal government nor the relevant forum states may prohibit me from announcing that Gfactor fellates dead goats – but if he takes umbrage at that and institutes suit against me for having defamed his character and caused him $N in lost income, he’s likely to win – I’m not protected by my First Amendment rights against civil suit.[/ul][/li]
Note that the explicit text prohibits Congress (and, by extension, the rest of the Federal government) from interfering with anyone’s freedom of speech, while the states are barred against abridging the freedom of speech of citizens.
In quick summary:
- Columbia U. as a non-governmental institution has complete freedom to decide whether or not to give Ahmedinejad a forum. They of course are liable for whatever private action may occur, from someone withdrawing endowment funds to a lawsuit from someone defamed in the speech.
- The Federal government may not intervene to bar Columbia from inviting Ahmedinejad. Under the U.N. treaty, it’s debatable whether they have the right to bar Ah. from accepting the invitation and going to Columbia. Certainly if the Union of Radical Muslims of Western Kentucky invited Osama bin Laden to speak in Paducah, the government would be well within their rights to stop him. But a foreign head of state or of government has certain diplomatic rights generally, and certain others within New York City as the seat of the U.N., which may be relevant.
- The states are only obliged to avoid infringing the rights of U.S. citizens, and to act in accord with due process of law. There might be a significant gray area there with regards to the free speech rights of non-U.S. citizens within the bounds of a given state.
I thought that a big part of the issue was that the DA said that the hanging of the nooses was not a hate crime or indeed a crime at all. Maybe I’ve been misinformed.
[Moderator pokes head in]
Considering the potential for turning this into a Great Debate, y’all are doing pretty well. Let’s keep it that way.
samclem
Yes, I believe that the DA has asserted he didn’t charge the noose-hangers because he couldn’t find a law on the books that the action violated.
Not being well-versed in Louisiana criminal law, I’m reluctant to say that he’s correct, but it’s hard to believe there isn’t some element of desire on his part not to find something under which to charge those students. :dubious:
Someone should simply punt this into Great Debates or The Pit and be done with the tap dance. 
I thought “being offensive” was not sufficient to make something a crime. Didn’t the supreme court say that a threat had to be concrete and specific to be a crime? For example, advocating the violent overthrow of the government in a general sense vs. telling your audience to burn down city hall on tuesday at midnight, bring your torches.
FWIW, I don’t agree that it’s kosher. I think it’s disgusting, and now that a Columbia dean has come out and said they’d invite Hitler to speak I’m even more appalled.
Hanging nooses on a tree is speech: a message is being communicated. Thus it is potentially protected.
But certain “speech” isn’t protected, and deciding on the dividing line is not a precision calculation. We can take it as a given that if the nooses were hung in the yard of the family of the boy who had asked to sit under the tree, then the “speech” would be prosecutable under the hate crime laws of some states. Does the fact that the threat involved occurred at the school change that?
Of course, one doesn’t want overly aggressive DAs (reference Nifong). But it is easy to say, “there is no law that covers this” when one wants to be an ostrich. A DA who wants to prevent that type of activity in the future looks for a statute to use and only refuses to charge if it cannot be shown that the suspects are guilty of violation beyond a reasonable doubt.
The real issue in Jena isn’t the failure to charge the hate crime, though. It’s the juxtapositioning of that decision with the determination that a beating that wasn’t severe enough to hospitalize the victim was sufficient to justify charges of attempted homicide. This is clearly a stretch; indeed, the charges have since been reduced in the case of all defendants except the minor who has sparked the current debate. Now we have a refusal to stretch to charge the white suspects, and a decision to over-reach to charge the black defendants. In Louisiana, that smacks of something other than “prosecutorial discretion.”
This is a new one to me — the First Amendment protects the rights only of U.S. citizens? Last I heard, it protects everybody in our country, citizen and non-citizen.