Court Opinion

ID: 9521862
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:13:51.85451+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:01:21.125498
License: Public Domain

Mr. JUSTICE RECHENMACHER, specially concurring: I concur with my colleagues, but wish to make the following additional comment. While a T-shirt may be a trivial matter, the broader legal and philosophical questions raised by this case are both complicated and important. Individual taste in such matters as dress and expression is constitutionally protected, even where the mode of expression may be offensive to most people. (Cohen v. California (1971), 403 U.S. 15, 29 L. Ed. 2d 284, 91 S. Ct. 1780.) Thus, in Cohen, an obviously obscene phrase, printed on a jacket, was held to be a constitutionally protected form of expression, and the defendant’s conviction for disorderly conduct, based solely upon the wearing of the jacket in the corridors of a courthouse, was reversed. At the same time, these very constitutional protections are largely dependent upon the power and dignity of courts to give them effect. Forms of individual expression which would do no more than annoy passers-by, if exhibited on a city sidewalk could, if exhibited in our courtrooms, so distract the proceedings and degrade the dignity of our courts, so as to impair their ability to administer the law and protect the rights of this defendant, and everyone else. How can these conflicting considerations be resolved? Obviously, only the courts can do so, using their best judgment and knowledge of the law in each matter, as it arises. In this case, the law provided only general guidance for the trial court; we have found no case directly on point, and none has been cited to us. Cohen might have provided dispositive guidance, had it not been for the fact that even Cohen had the good sense to remove his jacket and stand with it folded over his arm, when he entered a courtroom. 403 U.S. 15,19 n.3, 29 L. Ed. 2d 284, 290 n.3, 91 S. Ct. 1780, 1785 n.3.