Talk:Cantwell v. Connecticut

Analysis

The article describes this primarily as a free-exercise clause case, but my memory of the decision was that it was largely seen as a free-speech case -- that the main point was that a state could not suppress speech merely because others objected, and might possibly do so violently (this has been called the "Heckler's Veto" although not in the opinion, i think). Can we find a citeable source for the analysis, one way or the other? DES ^(talk) 12:37, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

• Note that in the opinion, we find such quotes as

  • The State Supreme Court .... overruled the contention that the Act, as applied to the appellants, offends the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, because it abridges or denies religious freedom and liberty of speech and press.

  • Moreover, the availability of a judicial remedy for abuses in the system of licensing still leaves that system one of previous restraint which, in the field of free speech and press, we have held inadmissible

  • Equally obvious is it that a state may not unduly suppress free communication of views, religious or other, under the guise of conserving desirable conditions.

  • In the realm of religious faith, and in that of political belief, sharp differences arise. In both fields the tenets of one man may seem the rankest error to his neighbor. To persuade others to his own point of view, the pleader, as we know, at times, resorts to exaggeration, to vilification of men who have been, or are, prominent in church or state, and even to false statement.

  • Although the contents of the record not unnaturally aroused animosity, we think that, in the absence of a statute narrowly drawn to define and punish specific conduct as constituting a clear and present danger to a substantial interest of the State, the petitioner's communication, considered in the light of the constitutional guarantees, raised no such clear and present menace to public peace and order as to render him liable to conviction of the common law offense in question.

• The above quotes persuade me that this is as much a free-speech case as anything, but to include such a conclusion might be seen as original research. I am looking for a secondary source on this point. DES ^(talk) 12:37, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
• On this page the First Admendment Center said "Polidoro in his petition harkened back to the long line of Jehovah's Witnesses cases that helped establish many of the court's most important First Amendment doctrines. One of the first was Cantwell v. Connecticut, a 1940 decision that upheld the right of Jehovah's Witnesses to solicit at street corners without being subject to a permit process that enabled local officials to completely prohibit the religious activity. The decision was also the first to apply the religion clauses of the First Amendment to state, as opposed to federal, action." That may be citable. DES ^(talk) 12:42, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Unclear or reversal?

"Before the Cantwell decision, it was not legally clear that the First Amendment protected religious practitioners against restrictions at the state and local levels as well as federal."

Citation please? The Bill of Rights was written exclusively for the purpose of preventing overreaching by the federal government beyond its limited enumerated powers. The opposition to the Bill of Rights was that it was unnecessary to reiterate what the federal government could not do within a scope powers powers they were not given. So this court "suddenly noticed" 72 years after the passage of the 14th amendment that the amendment had radically changed the relationship between the federal government and the states? I don't think so. Before that the rule on the implications of the Bill of Rights were brought to common-law in Barron v. Baltimore (1833) that said the Bill of Rights protected "traditional individual rights and state governments' traditional powers."

They did not "make clear what was previously unclear", they simply overturned Barron v. Baltimore, inverting the policy such that traditional individual rights and new federal powers were now protected against state government action.