Реферат: Mitchell V Wisconsin Essay Research Paper On

themselves. Two cases arguably support Rehnquist¹s position, but the

Supreme Court has traditionally ignored the first of rulings, and the

second has been misinterpreted.

In Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, Justice Murphy wrote what has become

known as the ³fighting words doctrine². Chaplinsky was a Jehova¹s

Witness in a predominantly Catholic town. He distributed leaflets to

a hostile crowd, and was refused protection by the town¹s marshall.

Chaplinsky then referred to the marshall as a ³god damn racketeer and

a damn fascist², for which he was convicted of breaching the peace.

Justice Murphy¹s opinion argued that certain speech, including that

which is lewd, obscene, profane, or insulting, is not covered by the

First Amendment.

According to Murphy, ³There are certain well-defined and narrowly

limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which has

never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem. These include

the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or

?fighting¹ words- those which by their very utterance inflict injury

or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.²

Under Chaplinky, bigoted remarks would probably qualify as ?fighting¹

words. However, the courts have generally been reluctant to uphold

the ?fighting¹words doctrine, and the Supreme Court has never done so

(Gellman 369,370). Even if today¹s Court were to consider Chaplinsky

valid, Mitchell¹s comments, though racial in nature, would be

difficult to classify as bigoted. In fact, Constitutional

considerations aside, the biggest problem with penalty enhancement

laws such as Wisconsin¹s, is classifying and prosecuting an incident

as hate-motivated (Cacas, 33). At what point can we be certain the

victim was selected based on race, religion, or sexual orientation?

Another more pressing problem is police unwillingness to investigate a