Significance: This ruling established a “two-tier” approach to First Amendment rights. This approach guaranteed free expression of ideas in general, but it also stated that certain kinds of speech did not merit such protection if that speech offended people without expressing ideas of any redeeming social value. This limitation would later become a rallying point for many people who believed in controlling pornography and commercial advertising.
Background: While distributing religious pamphlets, a Jehovah’s Witness named Chaplinsky had attracted a hostile crowd. Chaplinsky verbally abused a city marshall who arrived on the scene, calling him a “racketeer” and a “fascist.” He also called other officials “agents of fascists.” Chaplinsky was convicted for using abusive speech in public, which violated New Hampshire law.
Decision: This case was argued on February 5, 1942, and decided on March 9, 1942, by a vote of 9 to 0. Justice Frank Murphy spoke for the unanimous Court, which upheld Chaplinsky’s conviction. The Court decided that such verbal abuse had no social value other than disturbing the peace and so was not protected by the First Amendment.
Excerpt from the Opinion of the Court: “There 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 ‘fighting’ words—those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition [expression] of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality.”
