Source: http://uscivilliberties.org/cases/3175-beauharnais-v-illinois.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 17:46:59+00:00

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In Beauharnais v. Illinois, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the validity of a 1917 Illinois group libel statute, finding that such speech fell outside the protections of the First Amendment. Speaking for a divided Court, Justice Frankfurter’s majority opinion drew on the reasoning in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire wherein libel was excluded from Constitutional protection, and on Cantwell v. Connecticut for the authority of states to punish speech that would ‘‘incite violence and breaches of the peace.’’ Subsequent decisions, however, have cast doubt on the continuing validity of the Court’s decision in Beauharnais.
Just as the Supreme Court seemed to uphold the validity of group libel laws, proponents of group libel legislation turned their focus away from prohibiting group defamation and towards bolstering freedom of expression and individual rights. The dissenters in Beauharnais proved to foreshadow the future direction of Supreme Court First Amendment jurisprudence, which expanded the protections afforded offensive speech in such cases as Brandenburg v. Ohio and Cohen v. California. Moreover, New York Times Co. v. Sullivan and Collin v. Smith cast doubt on the presumption of damage to the individual members of a group from criticism of a group, while the latter case also undermined the view that ‘‘fighting words need not be used in a personally abusive manner when they consist of language which defames a race or religion.’’ As such, the Beauharnais decision appears eclipsed by decisions more protective of provocative speech, and its precedential value damaged if not completely diluted.
Banks, Taunya Lovell, What Is a Community? Group Rights and the Constitution: The Special Case of African Americans, Margins Law Journal 1 (Spring 2001): 51.
Eastland, Terry, ed. Freedom of Expression in the Supreme Court: The Defining Cases. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000.
Schultz, Evan P., Group Rights, American Jews and the Failure of Group Libel Laws, 1913–1952, Brooklyn Law Review 66 (Spring 2000): 71.

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