Parties: Poulos v. New Hampshire
Date: 1953-04-27
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Paragraph: 32 - When there is no duty to speak on such issues there is a duty not to speak. This is not so merely because constitutional pronouncements, when a case before the Court does not call for them, violate a constitutional practice sanctioned by history and reinforced by the costly experience of occasional departures from it. The practice is especially compelling in cases involving the scope and limits of judicial protection of religious freedom and freedom of speech. These present perhaps the most difficult issues for courts.
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Paragraph: 35 - If lucid English means what it unambiguously says, the 'first' contention in the above quotation—'no license for conducting religious ceremonies in Goodwin Park may be required because such a requirement would abridge the freedom of speech and religion guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment'—means that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment bars New Hampshire from requiring a license for 'an open air public meeting,' as is required by the ordinance of Portsmouth. And this in legal terms is a claim by the appellant that the ordinance (for jurisdictional purposes, a statute) is void on its face.
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Paragraph: 51 - Here the record shows beyond doubt that objection to Poulos' talking was not rooted in a permissible regulation as to the time and place street or park speeches could be made. For the New Hampshire Supreme Court tells us that its officials 'arbitrarily and unreasonably' refused to grant Poulos a 'license' to talk. This shows that the State's speech licensing officials actually denied Poulos his constitutional right of free speech. The Court now holds Poulos can be branded a criminal for making a talk at the very time and place which the State Supreme Court has held its licensing officials could not legally forbid. I do not challenge the Court's argument that New Hampshire could prosecute a man who refused to follow the letter of the law to procure a license to 'run businesses,' 'erect structures,' 'purchase firearms,' 'store explosives,' or, I may add, to run a pawnshop. But the First Amendment affords freedom of speech a special protection; I believe it prohibits a state from convicting a man of crime whose only offense is that he makes an orderly religious appeal after he has been illegally 'arbitrarily and unreasonably' denied a 'license' to talk. This to me is a subtle use of a creeping censorship loose in the land.
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Paragraph: 56 - If the citizen can flout the legislature when it undertakes to tamper with his First Amendment rights, I fail to see why he may not flout the official or agency who administers a licensing law designed to regulate the exercise of the right of free speech. defiance of a statute is hardly less harmful to an orderly society than defiance of an administrative order.
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Phrase match: the right of free speech. defiance
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Paragraph: 47 - New Hampshire may in these circumstances, I agree, refuse him permission to set up the Council's arbitrary denial of his application as a defense to prosecution under the ordinance, which fixes the penalty at $20. There is nothing in the record to suggest that the remedy to which the Supreme Court of New Hampshire confined Poulos effectively frustrated his right of utterance, let alone that it circumvented his constitutional right by a procedural pretense.
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Phrase match: his right of utterance, let alone
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Paragraph: 50 - The Court's holding in this case is one more in a series of recent decisions which fail to protect the right of Americans to speak freely.
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Paragraph: 51 - This shows that the State's speech licensing officials actually denied Poulos his constitutional right of free speech. The Court now holds Poulos can be branded a criminal for making a talk at the very time and place which the State Supreme Court has held its licensing officials could not legally forbid. I do not challenge the Court's argument that New Hampshire could prosecute a man who refused to follow the letter of the law to procure a license to 'run businesses,' 'erect structures,' 'purchase firearms,' 'store explosives,' or, I may add, to run a pawnshop. But the First Amendment affords freedom of speech a special protection; I believe it prohibits a state from convicting a man of crime whose only offense is that he makes an orderly religious appeal after he has been illegally 'arbitrarily and unreasonably' denied a 'license' to talk. This to me is a subtle use of a creeping censorship loose in the land.
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Phrase match: constitutional right of free speech
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Paragraph: 55 - A legislature that undertakes to license or censor the right of free speech is imposing a prior restraint, see Near v. State of Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697, 51 S.Ct. 625, 75 L.Ed. 1357, odious in our history. The Constitution commands that government keep its hands off the exercise of First Amendment rights. No matter what the legislature may say, a man has the right to make his speech, print his handbill, compose his newspaper, and deliver his sermon without asking anyone's permission.
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Paragraph: 14 - The principles of First Amendment are not to be treated as a promise that everyone with opinions or beliefs to express may gather around him at any public place and at any time a group for discussion or instruction. It is a nonsequitur to say that First Amendment rights may not be regulated because they hold a preferred position in the hierarchy of the constitutional guarantees of the incidents of freedom. This Court has never so held and indeed has definitely indicated the contrary. It has indicated approval of reasonable nondiscriminatory regulation by governmental authority that preserves peace, order and tranquillity without deprivation of the First Amendment guarantees of free speech, press and the exercise of religion. When considering specifically the regulation of the use of public parks, this Court has taken the same position. See the quotation from the Hague case below and Kunz v. People of State of New York, 340 U.S. 290, 293—294, 71 S.Ct. 312, 314—315, 95 L.Ed. 280; Saia v. People of State of New York, 334 U.S. 558, 562, 68 S.Ct. 1148, 1150, 92 L.Ed. 1574. In these cases, the ordinances were held invalid, not because they regulated the use of the parks for meeting and instruction but because they left complete discretion to refuse the use in the hands of officials.N51* 'The right to be heard is placed in the uncontrolled discretion of the Chief of Police.' 334 U.S. at page 560, 68 S.Ct. at page 1150, 92 L.Ed. 1574. N52* '(W)e have consistently condemned licensing systems which vest in an administrative official discretion to grant or withhold a permit upon broad criteria unrelated to proper regulation of public places.'
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Paragraph: 51 - Nothing said there indicated that a state's power to regulate traffic carried with it a right to censor public speeches or speakers merely because the state did not wish certain speakers to be heard.
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Paragraph: 53 - The Court concedes, as indeed it must under our decisions, see Royall v. State of Virginia, 116 U.S. 572, 6 S.Ct. 510, 29 L.Ed. 735; Thomas v. Collins, 323 U.S. 516, 65 S.Ct. 315, 89 L.Ed. 430, that if denial of the right to speak had been contained in a statute, appellant would have been entitled to flout the law, to exercise his constitutional right to free speech, to make the address on July 2, 1950, and when arrested and tried for violating the statute, to defend on the ground that the law was unconstitutional. An unconstitutional statute is not necessarily a nullity; it may have intermediate consequences binding upon people. See Chicot County Dist. v. Baxter State Bank, 308 U.S. 371, 60 S.Ct. 317, 84 L.Ed. 329. But when a legislature undertakes to proscribe the exercise of a citizen's constitutional right to free speech, it acts lawlessly; and the citizen can take matters in his own hands and proceed on the basis that such a law is no law at all.
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Phrase match: the right to speak had been
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Paragraph: 55 - The Constitution commands that government keep its hands off the exercise of First Amendment rights. No matter what the legislature may say, a man has the right to make his speech, print his handbill, compose his newspaper, and deliver his sermon without asking anyone's permission.
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Phrase match: the right to make his speech
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Paragraph: 56 - The vice of a statute, which exacts a license for the right to make a speech, is that it adds a burden to the right. The burden is the same when the officials administering the licensing system withhold the license and require the applicant to spend months or years in the courts in order to win a right which he Constitution says no government shall deny.
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Phrase match: the right to make a speech
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Paragraph: 59 - The requirement that the licensing authority stay within 'the bounds of reason' and that it be 'free from improper or inappropriate considerations and from unfair discrimination' is a command that it act reasonably, not capriciously or arbitrarily. But even a reasonable regulation of the right to free speech is not compatible with the First Amendment.
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Paragraph: 63 - There is no free speech in the sense of the Constitution when permission must be obtained from an official before a speech can be made. That is a previous restraint condemned by history and at war with the First Amendment. The nature of the particular official who has the power to grant or deny the authority does not matter. Those who wrote the First Amendment conceived of the right to free speech as wholly independent of the prior restraint of anyone.
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Paragraph: 14 - The principles of First Amendment are not to be treated as a promise that everyone with opinions or beliefs to express may gather around him at any public place and at any time a group for discussion or instruction. It is a nonsequitur to say that First Amendment rights may not be regulated because they hold a preferred position in the hierarchy of the constitutional guarantees of the incidents of freedom. This Court has never so held and indeed has definitely indicated the contrary. It has indicated approval of reasonable nondiscriminatory regulation by governmental authority that preserves peace, order and tranquillity without deprivation of the First Amendment guarantees of free speech, press and the exercise of religion.
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Paragraph: 51 - But the First Amendment affords freedom of speech a special protection; I believe it prohibits a state from convicting a man of crime whose only offense is that he makes an orderly religious appeal after he has been illegally 'arbitrarily and unreasonably' denied a 'license' to talk. This to me is a subtle use of a creeping censorship loose in the land.
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Phrase match: freedom of speech a special protection
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Paragraph: 63 - What Mr. Justice Roberts said needs to be repeated over and again. There is no free speech in the sense of the Constitution when permission must be obtained from an official before a speech can be made. That is a previous restraint condemned by history and at war with the First Amendment. The nature of the particular official who has the power to grant or deny the authority does not matter. Those who wrote the First Amendment conceived of the right to free speech as wholly independent of the prior restraint of anyone.
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Phrase match: no free speech in the sense
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Paragraph: 51 - But the First Amendment affords freedom of speech a special protection; I believe it prohibits a state from convicting a man of crime whose only offense is that he makes an orderly religious appeal after he has been illegally 'arbitrarily and unreasonably' denied a 'license' to talk. This to me is a subtle use of a creeping censorship loose in the land.
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