Types of speech Core political speech[edit] This is the most highly guarded form of speech because of its purely expressive nature and importance to a functional republic. Restrictions placed upon core political speech must weather strict scrutiny analysis or they will be struck down. The primary exception to this rule would be within the context of the electoral process, whereby the Supreme Court has ruled that suffrage or standing for political office as a candidate are not political speech and thus can be subjected to significant regulations; such restrictions have been upheld in Buckley v. Valeo. Commercial speech[edit] Main article: Commercial speech Not wholly outside the protection of the First Amendment is commercial speech, which is speech that propose[s] a commercial transaction. Ohralik v. Ohio State Bar Assn, 436 US 447 (1978). Such speech still has expressive value although it is being uttered in a marketplace ordinarily regulated by the state. Restrictions of commercial speech are subject to a four-element intermediate scrutiny. (Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v. Public Service Commission) A June 2011 case casts doubt upon whether this category exists any more, or if it has been folded into the main category of speech. (Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc.)[4] Expressive conduct[edit] While freedom of expression by non-speech means is commonly thought to be protected under the First Amendment, the Supreme Court has only recently taken this view. As late as 1968 (United States v. OBrien) the Supreme Court stated that regulating non-speech can justify limitations on speech. The Court carried this distinction between speech and expression through the early part of the 1980s (Clark v. C.C.N.V., 1984). It was not until the flag-burning cases of 1989 (Texas v. Johnson) and 1990 (United States v. Eichman), that the Supreme Court accepted that non-speech means applied to freedom of expression and freedom of speech.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 02:45:20 +0000
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