Thursday, March 20, 2008

TEXAS v. JOHNSON (1989) CASE BRIEF.


CASE BRIEF: TEXAS v. JOHNSON (1989)

Title and citation

Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397

Facts

Gregory Lee Johnson, the defendant, participated in a demonstration at the Republican National Convention in Texas in 1984. At one point during the nonviolent demonstration, Johnson was handed an American flag and he set it on fire. No one was injured but Johnson was convicted of destroying a respected object. He was fined $2,000 as well as sentenced to a year in prison. He appealed his conviction, but lost in the Court of Appeals for the Fifth District of Texas. He then took his case to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. His conviction was overturned; the court maintained that Johnson could not be punished for exercising a right to free speech that is protected by the First Amendment. In 1989, the Supreme Court took on the case, and affirmed (by a controversial decision of 5-4) the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals’ decision to overturn Johnson’s conviction.

Issues

1. Does flag burning pose a threat to the nation’s unity?

2. Should the flag be protected as a symbol of national unity?

3 Does the First Amendment extend to protect speech acts?

4. Is burning a flag an act of protected free speech?

Held

1. No; in this case specifically, the court decided that Johnson’s burning of a flag did not disturb the peace or pose a threat to national unity.

2. No, at least not to the point that it should be singled out from other national objects such as the Constitution as the one protected object or that the destruction of it should be criminalized.

3. Yes; the First Amendment also protects expressive conduct that is non-verbal.

4. Yes; flag burning is considered a form of expressive conduct that is protected under the First Amendment’s right to free speech.

Reasoning

Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justice Blackmun, Justice Scalia, and Justice Marshall. The court considered the First Amendment and whether its free speech protection extended to include nonverbal speech acts and whether Johnson’s action could be considered expressive conduct, in which case he would be able to invoke his First Amendment rights to protect him. The court agreed that “speech” as stated in the First Amendment goes beyond spoken and written word to protect acts, that Johnson’s intended message in burning the flag was made very clear, and that the content of his intended message cannot cancel out his right to express his ideas. Though the state argued it wanted to protect the peace and venerated national objects, the court found that Johnson’s conduct did not in any way threaten the peace or pose a threat to national unity as represented by the flag.

Concurrence

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a short concurrence in which he agreed with the decision and reasoning of the four fellow majority justices, but sympathized with the four justices who dissented. He remarked that sometimes the nature of the law and Constitution compelled a decision that the justices did not necessarily want to make, but that was right within the laws and freedoms of the Constitution.


Dissent

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, joined by Justices White and O’Connor, discussed in his dissenting opinion the importance of the American flag as a symbol respected more than any other in history. He debated he absolutism of free speech and whether limits should be implemented in the case of a venerated national object such as the flag.

Justice John Paul Stevens also wrote a dissenting opinion, in which he stated that the case involved “disagreeable conduct” of the defendant doing harm to an important national symbol and that the content of the defendant’s message was not relevant to the case.


Decision

The Supreme Court affirmed by a 5-4 decision the ruling of the criminal appeals court, finding that the petitioner’s interest in preventing the breach of peace did not hold up, as the defendant’s actions did not incite lawless behavior and that the defendant’s right to free expression of ideas through speech and conduct outweighed the petitioner’s interest in protecting the American flag as a symbol of unity.

Significance

The ruling in this case invalidated 48 state statutes prohibiting/criminalizing flag burning as unconstitutional. This decision maintained that flag burning is protected speech under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution as it is expressive conduct and maintained that the First Amendment does not cover only vocal/verbal speech but other forms of speech and speech acts. Texas v. Johnson can be considered the landmark case within the issue of flag burning and a major case related to the intricacies of free speech.