Supreme Court's Precedent Backs Donald Trump

[Purveyor]

MAR 14, 2016 1:22 PM EDT
By Noah Feldman

The melee at the Donald Trump rally Friday night in Chicago raises a fundamental First Amendment question: When a speaker, such as the Republican presidential candidate, is confronting angry protesters, whose speech rights come first: the speaker’s or the protesters’?

The U.S. Supreme Court’s answer to this question has evolved over the years. At one time, the court was ambivalent, sometimes favoring the speaker and sometimes willing to shut down the speaker to avoid public disorder.

Today, however, the norm is clear: Protesters who disrupt a rally can be removed by police so that they don’t exercise what’s called a heckler’s veto over the rally’s organizer. It shouldn’t matter whether it’s the Ku Klux Klan interrupting a civil-rights speaker or civil-rights protesters interrupting a racist diatribe. The law considers the speaker’s rights as paramount.

The first important Supreme Court case on the issue involved a rally that took place in 1946, by coincidence in Chicago. Arthur Terminiello, sometimes called the Father Charles Coughlin of the South, was a Boston-born Catholic priest who combined anti-Communism with anti-Semitism. He rented an auditorium in Albany Park, then a Jewish neighborhood, and announced a speech titled “Christ or Chaos -- Christian Nationalism or World Communism -- Which?”

A crowd of angry protesters met Terminiello and tried to block access to the auditorium. When he began speaking, he referred to the people outside as “slimy scum.” According to some reports, shouts of “Kill the Jews” rang out inside the building. The crowd outside threw rocks, bricks and ice picks, breaking windows in the auditorium. A group of boys rushed at the police. There were many injuries, and 19 protesters were arrested at the event. Later that night, the Chicago police arrested Terminiello for breach of the peace.

more...

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-03-14/supreme-court-backs-donald-trump

[Jackie Wilson Said]

1. Protesters dont have rights to disrupt on private property. Can be and I suppose should be

arrested.



The issue isn't rights or arrests, the issue is violence against a protester by anyone.

Not legal, not OK, not the American Way.