Randazza Legal Group - First Amendment lawyers, intellectual property lawyers, copyright lawyers, trademark lawyers, internet lawyers

If the First Amendment means anything, it means that the State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch.
Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 565 (1969)
Free speech has been on balance an ally of those seeking change. Governments that want stasis start by restricting speech. Culture is a powerful force of continuity; Indianapolis paints pornography as part of the culture of power. Change in any complex system ultimately depends on the ability of outsiders to challenge accepted views and the reigning institutions. Without a strong guarantee of freedom of speech, there is no effective right to challenge what is.
American Booksellers v. Hudnut, 771 F.2d 323 (7th Cir. 1985)
We consider this case against the background of a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.
New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 270 (U.S. 1964)
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
Benjamin Franklin
The fact that society may find speech offensive is not a sufficient reason for suppressing it. Indeed, if it is the speaker's opinion that gives offense, that consequence is a reason for according it constitutional protection. For it is a central tenet of the First Amendment that the government must remain neutral in the marketplace of ideas.
FCC v. Pacifica Fdn., 438 U.S. 726, 745-746 (U.S. 1978)
Would there be any freedom of press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemisms?
Judge Clayton Horn (ruling that Allen Ginsburg’s poem, Howl, was not legally obscene)
Sex is as important as eating or drinking and we ought to allow the one appetite to be satisfied with as little restraint or false modesty as the other.
The Marquis De Sade
Cautious, careful people always casting about to preserve their reputation or social standards never can bring about reform. Those who are really in earnest are willing to be anything or nothing in the world’s estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathies with despised ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.
Susan B. Anthony
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids equally the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread.
From The Red Lily by Anatole France (Jacques Thibault)
But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas -- that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution.
Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616, 630 (1919) (Holmes, J., dissenting)
Art certainly cannot advance under compulsion to traditional forms, and nothing in such a field is more stifling to progress than limitation of the right to experiment with a new technique.
United States v. One Book Entitled Ulysses, 72 F.2d 705, 708 (2d Cir. 1934)
One man's vulgarity is another man's lyric.
Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971)
It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.
Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357, 375-76 (Brandeis, J., concurring)
Racial bigotry, anti-semitism, violence on television, reporters' biases--these and many more influence the culture and shape our socialization. None is directly answerable by more speech, unless that speech too finds its place in the popular culture. Yet all is protected as speech, however insidious. Any other answer leaves the government in control of all of the institutions of culture, the great censor and director of which thoughts are good for us.
American Booksellers v. Hudnut, 771 F.2d 323 (7th Cir. 1985)
Speech concerning public affairs is more than self-expression; it is the essence of self-government.
Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 64, 74-75 (1964)
Freedom of discussion, if it would fulfill its historic function in this nation, must embrace all issues about which information is needed or appropriate to enable the members of society to cope with the exigencies of their period.
Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U. S. 88, 102 (1940).
If there is a bedrock principle 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.
Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989)
If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.
West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943)
Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.
John Milton, Areopagitica
For your information, the Supreme Court has roundly rejected prior restraint!
-Walter Sobchak
The government cannot constitutionally premise legislation on the desirability of controlling a person’s private thoughts. First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.
Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234 (2002)

If the First Amendment means anything, it means that the State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch.

We consider this case against the background of a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Would there be any freedom of press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemisms?

Sex is as important as eating or drinking and we ought to allow the one appetite to be satisfied with as little restraint or false modesty as the other.

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids equally the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread.

Art certainly cannot advance under compulsion to traditional forms, and nothing in such a field is more stifling to progress than limitation of the right to experiment with a new technique.

One man's vulgarity is another man's lyric.

It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.

Speech concerning public affairs is more than self-expression; it is the essence of self-government.

Freedom of discussion, if it would fulfill its historic function in this nation, must embrace all issues about which information is needed or appropriate to enable the members of society to cope with the exigencies of their period.

If there is a bedrock principle 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.

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

For your information, the Supreme Court has roundly rejected prior restraint!

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