Реферат: Mitchell V Wisconsin Essay Research Paper

Supreme Court, which said ?the Wisconsin legislature cannot

criminalize bigoted thought with which it disagrees.?

?If there is a bedrock principal underlying the First Amendment, it

is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea

simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or

disagreeable?. The Supreme Court was heard to utter such noble

phrases as recently as 1989, in Texas v. Johnson. Unfortunately these

idealistic principles seem to have been abandoned during Wisconsin v.

Mitchell.

Clearly, Mitchell?s act of assaulting another human is a punishable

crime, and no one could logiacally argue that the First Amendment

protects this clearly criminal action. However, the state?s power to

punish the action does not remove the constitutional barrier to

punishing the criminal?s thoughts (Cacas, 337). The First Amendment

has generally been interpreted to protect the thoughts, as well as the

speech, of an individual (Cacas, 338). According to the Court?s

majority opinion in Wooley v. Maynard, a 1977 case, ?At the heart of

the First Amendment is the notion that an individual should be free to

believe as he will, and that in a free society one?s beliefs should be

shaped by his mind and his conscience rather than coerced by the

state.?

Another componet of Mitchell?s First Amendment argument against the

penalty enhancement law, was that the statute was overbroad, and might

have a ?chilling effect? on free speech. Mitchell contended that with

such a penalty enhancement law, many citizens would be hesitant to

experess their unpopular opinions, for fear that those opinions would

be used against them in the future.

In Abrams v. United States, Justice Holmes, in his dissent, argued

that ?laws which limit or chill thought and expression detract from