clear and present danger (test)

• Clear and present danger (test)

• A legal interpretation that reconciled two views of the First Amendment right of free speech, the first that Congress could not pass any law to restrict speech and the second that it could punish harms caused by speech.

• Proposed by Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1919, it held that Congress could punish only speech that created a clear and present danger of bringing of bringing about the actions that congress is authorized to prevent.

• Communist Control Act (of 1954)

• Declare the Communist Party to be part of a conspiracy to overthrow the government

• United States federal legislation, signed into law by Dwight Eisenhower on 24 August 1954, which outlawed the Communist Party of the United States. It amended the Subversive Activities Control Act, and prohibited communist from running for public office.

• Due process clause of the fourteenth amendment

• Protection against arbitrary derivation of life, liberty, or property as guaranteed in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments

• Espionage Act and Sedition Act (1917-1918)

• Makes it a crime to utter false statements that would interfere with the American military, to send through the mails material “advocating or urging treason, insurrection, or forcible resistance to any law of the United States”, or to utter or write any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language intended to incite resistance to United States or to curtail war production

• Establishment clause

• A clause in the First Amendment to the Constitution that Congress shall make no law “ respecting an establishment of religion”

• Exclusionary rule

• A rule that holds that evidence gathered in violation of the Constitution cannot be used in trial.

• The right has been implemented in two provisions of the Bill of Rights – the right to be free from unreasonable searches or seizures (Fourth Amendment) and the right not to be compelled to give evidence against oneself (Fifth Amendment).

• Freedom of expression

• The constitutional rights of Americans to “freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances” as outlined in the First Amendment to the Constitution

• Freedom of religion

• The religious rights of Americans outlined in the First Amendment to the Constitution

• The amendment states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion; or abridging free exercise thereof”

• Free exercise clause

• A clause in the First Amendment to the Constitution stating that Congress shall make no law prohibiting the “free exercise” of religion

• Good faith exception

• Admission at a trial of evidence that is gathered in violation of the Constitution if the violations results fro a technical or minor error

• Hate crime

• crimes (such as violent crime, hate speech or vandalism) that are motivated by feelings of hostility against any identifiable group of people within a society

• The U.S. Congress defined in 1992 a hate crime as a crime in which "the defendant's conduct was motivated by hatred, bias, or prejudice, based on the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or gender identity of another individual or group of individuals"

• Internal security act (of 1950)

• Requires members of the Communist Party to register with the government

• established the Subversive Activities Control Board to investigate persons thought to be engaged in "un-American" activities

• Legislation that severely curtailed the rights of known or suspected communists

• Libel

• A written statement falsely injures the reputation of another person

• McCarthyism

• Charges that unfairly or dishonestly tarnish the motives, attack the patriotism, or violate the rights of individuals, especially of political opponents

• Refers to the numerous unsubstantiated accusations of communism made against public and private individuals by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s

• Obscenity

• expressions (words, images, actions) that offend the prevalent sexual morality of the time

• Prior restraint

• the traditional view of the press’s free speech rights as expressed by William Blackstone, the great English Jurist

• According to this view the press is guaranteed freedom from censorship – that is, rules telling it in advance what it can publish

• Probable cause

• Good reason that suggests a crime has been committed

• Standard by which a police officer may make an arrest, conduct a personal or property search or obtain a warrant

• Also standard to which a grand jury believes that a crime has been committed

• Public figure

• IE celebrity, elected official, army general, etc

• A public figure cannot base a lawsuit on incorrect harmful statements unless there is proof that the writer or publisher intentionally defamed the person with malice

• Search warrant

• An order from a judge authorizing the search of a place; the order must describe what is to be searched and seized, and the judge can issue it only if he or she is persuaded by the police that probable cause exists that a crime has been committed and that the evidence bearing on the crime will be found at a certain location

• Sedition Act (of 1918)

• An amendment to the Espionage Act of 1917• The Sedition Act forbade an American to use

"disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the United States government, flag, or armed forces during war

• The act also allowed the Postmaster General to deny mail delivery to dissenters of government policy during wartime

• Smith Act (of 1940)

• Made it illegal to advocate the overthrow of United States government by force or violence

• Symbolic speech

• An act that conveys a political message, such as burning a draft card to protest the draft

• Wall of separation principle

• A Supreme Court interpretation of the establishment clause in the First Amendment that prevents government involvement with religion, even on a non-preferential basis

• Affirmative action

• The requirement, imposed by law or administrative regulation, that an organization take positive steps to increase the umber or proportion of women, blacks or other minorities in its membership

• Alien

• a person who is neither a native nor a citizen of their country of residence

• Brown v. Board of Education

• Linda Brown’s parents/NAACP sued the board of education because she was not allowed to attend an all white school that was in he neighborhood than a all black school

• The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that separate but equal was unconstitutional

• Overruled Plessy v Ferguson

• Civil rights act of 1964

• Legislation outlawing discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin

• Originally conceived to protect the rights of black men, the bill was amended prior to passage to protect the civil rights of all men and women

• Compensatory action

• An action designed to help members of disadvantaged groups, especially minorities and women, catch up, usually by giving them extra education, training or services

• De factor segregation

• Racial segregation in schools that occur not because of laws or administration decisions, but as a result of patterns of residential settlement. To the extent that blacks and whites live in separate neighborhoods, neighborhood schools will often be segregated de facto.

• De jure segregation

• Racial segregation that occurs because of laws or administrative decisions by public agencies

• Equality of opportunity

• A view that it is wrong to use race or sex either to discriminate against or give preference treatment to minorities or women

• Equality of results

• A view that the burdens of racism and sexism can be overcome only by taking race or sex into account in designing remedies

• Fourteenth amendment

• Ex-slaves made citizens• Due process clause applied to states• Equal protection• Reduces congressional representation for

states denying adult males the right to vote

• Southern rebels denied federal office• Rebel debts repudiated

• Hyde amendment

• Bar federal funds to pay for abortions excepts when the life of the mother is at stake

• Jim Crow

• A slang expression for African Americans that emerged in the 1820s and came to signify the laws and governmental practices designed to segregate blacks from whites, especially in the American south

• National association for the advancement of colored people (NAACP)

• National group that wants to ensure the political, educational, social and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination

• Nonviolent civil disobedience

• A philosophy of opposing a law one considers unjust by peacefully violating it and allowing oneself to be punished as a result

• Plessy v. Ferguson

• Plessy who was 1/8 black refused to ride in a separate train car from the whites. He was arrested on that basis. He claimed that the arrest violated his fourteenth amendment rights. The courts ruled against him claiming that separate but equal was constitutional.

• Preferential treatment

• Giving minorities preference in hiring, promotions, college admissions, and contracts

• Reverse discrimination

• Using race or sex to give preferential treatment to some people

• Roe v. Wade

• In some states abortion was legal, others it wasn’t. texas, particularly, abortion was legal. The lady under the pseudonym of Roe couldn’t afford to travel to another state for the abortion. She claimed the fourteenth amendment. In a 7 to 2 vote, the court rule in her favor claiming that the fourteenth amendment gives the right to privacy.

• Rostker v. Goldberg

• A case where the court held that men and not women are required to register for the draft without violating the due process clause of the fifth amendment

• Separate but equal doctrine

• The doctrine establishes in Plessy v. Ferguson, in which the Supreme Court ruled that a state could provide separate but equal facilities for African Americansm

• Strict scrutiny

• The standard by which the Supreme Court judges classifications based on race. To be accepted such a classification must be closely related to a compelling public purpose

• Suspect classifications

• Classifications of people on the basis of their race and ethnicity. The courts have ruled that laws classifying people on these grounds will be suspect to “strict scrutiny”

• Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg

• A case that set the guidelines for all subsequent cases involving school segregation

• White flight

• Mandatory busing or other integration measures that cause whites to move out of a city at a faster rate than they otherwise would