(Hammer v. Dagenhart) v. (Bond v. United States)

For those of you (few in number) who have stuck with me to the Tenth Amendment, I applaud you dealing with some of the more mundane amendments. With your commitment in mind, I’ve decided to treat you to two cases for the price of one amendment.

The Tenth Amendment is the absolute antithesis of saving the best for last. I have nothing more than that to say about it. Here is the text of the Tenth Amendment:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

The Tenth Amendment was basically the framers way of saying “Hey, the federal government doesn’t control everything.” This amendment paved the way for federalism, reserving some rights to the states and setting up the separation of powers between federal, state, and local governments that exists to this day.

Very few cases have ever relied on the Tenth Amendment, and in a Supreme Court case in 1931, the justices agreed that the good old number 10 didn’t really add anything to the Constitution. However, there have been a handful of cases (literally countable on one hand) that deal directly with the Tenth Amendment.

The first, Hammer v. Dagenhart, was argued in 1918. At the time, a federal law outlawed shipping goods that were produced by child labor over state lines on the basis of the federal government’s right to legislate on interstate commerce. Dagenhart sued, claiming that the federal government couldn’t take away his right to send his 14 year old son to work in a textile mill. What a wonderful father.

Probably not Dagenhart, but let's act like it might be | Courtesy of Glogster

The Supreme Court, in a tight 5-4 decision, ruled that regulation of production was one of the rights not delegated to the United States and therefore reserved to the states. Justice Day, writing for the court, wrote that “the powers not expressly delegated to the national government are reserved” to the states. Adding the word expressly, Day specified further the interpretation of the Tenth Amendment and broadened its potential implementation. Even the addition of one measly adverb can make a significant legal difference.

Another "important" case, Bond v. United States, was decided much more recently, in June of 2011. In this case, Carol Bond acquired highly toxic chemicals from the company she worked for and tried to poison her husband’s mistress (and baby mama) 24 times over several months. Bond was found guilty and appealed but was denied appeal because she didn’t have standing to challenge the law based on the Tenth Amendment. Bond appealed this inability to appeal, somewhat confusingly, and found her way to the Supreme Court.

Chief Justice Roberts: "Nor do the other circumstances of Bond's offense - an act of
revenge born of romantic jealousy, meant to cause discomfort, that produced
nothing more than a minor thumb burn - suggest that a chemical weapon was
deployed in Norristown, Pennsylvania." | Image Courtesy of GSMRR Club

At the Supreme Court, a unanimous decision found that Bond did indeed have the right to appeal, and it is not only states who may attempt to invalidate laws under the Tenth Amendment but individuals as well. Bond was granted her appeal at the district court and lost again, appealed to the Supreme Court again, and again the Supreme Court supported her. This time, the Supreme Court asserted that the Chemical Warfare Act did not extend to Bond and she could not be tried under it.

As you can see, particularly from the Bond cases, the Tenth Amendment is a complicated mess of legalese but is still vital to our government’s functioning. For those of you have made it this far, once again, I commend you and appreciate your support.

Planned Parenthood Penumbras

As I mentioned in a prior post, the Ten Amendments of the Bill of Rights get successively less exciting as we move down the list. I think it was originally supposed to be eight, but ten seemed cooler, so James Madison decided to just make up two more and call it a day.

Regardless of the lack of awareness of the last two amendments, they are critical to the overall operation of our political system. They may not be as quoted as the First Amendment, as controversial as the Second Amendment, or as oft referenced as the Fifth Amendment, but an understanding of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments is invaluable to an understanding of American government.

The Ninth Amendment basically states that people have other rights than the one laid out in the Constitution. It’s a protection against someone claiming that the Constitution, in delineating and protecting certain rights but excluding others, actually decreases the rights of the citizens. The text of the Ninth Amendment reads thusly:

           

“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

As with many of the amendments in the Bill of Rights, there is a particularly important landmark case based on the Ninth Amendment: Griswold v. Connecticut. This case, argued in 1965 (the crux of the sexual revolution), addressed a potential infraction by Estelle Griswold, the Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut. Under Connecticut law, it was illegal to provide counseling or other medical treatment to married couples with the contraceptive intent. Griswold and Dr. C. Lee, a professor from Yale Medical School, were both convicted under this law and found guilty.

Estelle Griswold | Courtesy of  UMKC Law

As you can guess, the two appealed, and the case found itself to the Supreme Court in 1965. Under the Tenth Amendment, Griswold believed that the Connecticut law was an unconstitutional breach of the rights of married people.

In a 7-2 decision, the Court agreed with Griswold, striking down the Connecticut law for violating the Constitution. Justice Douglas, in the majority opinion, set a powerful precedent for future cases, asserting that the Bill of Rights creates “penumbras”, or extensions of the rights guaranteed to citizens by implication. He claimed that the spirit of other amendments, such as free speech in the First, freedom from unwarranted searches in the Fourth, and protection from self-incrimination in the Fifth, point to an implicit “right to privacy”. Using the Ninth Amendment, one can argue that this is one of the other rights not enumerated in the Constitution but still retained by the citizens.

Other justices substantiated the decision using the Fourteenth Amendment (Due Process), but Justice Arthur Goldberg, in his concurrence with the opinion of the Court, argued that Ninth Amendment validates the decision. He claims that the Ninth Amendment permits the Court to identify the “fundamental right to marital privacy” outside of the confines of the other amendments. In this way, the Court established the power of the Ninth Amendment in adjudicating matters which may not be expressly laid out in the Constitution however it deems fit.

Poor Willie Francis v. Sparky

We’ve finally reached the last somewhat interesting Amendment of the Bill of Rights, the namesake of this entire blog. The Eighth Amendment is one of the most well-known of the Bill of Rights. It is terse, to the point, and indeed memorable: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”

As I imagine you may already be aware, the crux of this amendment lies in the clause barring cruel and unusual punishment. Over the years, this phrase has raised a lot of questions: what does it mean to be cruel? If a punishment is cruel, does it matter if it’s unusual or not? How can we compare the cruelty or unusualness of two different punishments?

The notion of cruel and unusual punishment can be traced back the English Bill of Rights in 1689. The American Founding Fathers sourced much of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution from British documents, so it is no surprise that the influence is quite evident.

With regards to court cases surrounding the Eighth Amendment, there is a landmark case that set up all future interpretation of the phrase cruel and unusual. Furman v. Georgia, decided in June of 1972, focuses on a burglary conducted by Furman in which he fell and accidentally discharged a gun, killing a resident of the home. In the per curiam (by the court as a whole) decision, one of the shortest of all time (only one page), the court declared that the implementation of the death penalty in this and two related cases was a form of cruel and unusual punishment. A variety of concurrences and dissents focused on the arbitrariness with which capital punishment was delegated, particularly against minorities, demonstrating its cruel and unusual nature.

Following the 1972 “moratorium on death”, many states rewrote their laws to ensure that the Supreme Court would allow them. In Gregg v. Georgia, decided in 1976, the Supreme Court approved the constitutionality of many states’ new policies, thereby bringing the death penalty back to life.

While this history of the death penalty is critical to an understanding of the Eighth Amendment, I'd like to include some background on a lesser known case that happened before all of the aforementioned ones. In 1946, the Supreme Court heard the case of Francis v. Resweber. The reason this case is so interesting is because it provides a unique glimpse into the legal system of 70 years ago.

Willie Francis was convicted of a murder in Louisiana at the age of 16. He was sentenced to be electrocuted. In the electrocution process, Francis was shocked but not killed. He pressed charges before he was re-electrocuted that a second attempt would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. In a five  to four vote, the Court ruled that a second electrocution would not constitute cruel and unusual punishment; rather, it was simply the implementation of the sentencing to its fullest extent.

Willie Francis in the Electric Chair
Courtesy of Law Street Media

Of note is that Francis was black in 1947 Louisiana, a tough time and place to be a minority. This could be indicative of the future difficulties the death penalty faced in Furman. Despite its outdated nature, Francis v. Resweber is a uniquely interesting case from the annals of Supreme Court history.

Poor Clarence Elvin Feltner

The Bill of Rights is almost set up as a ranking of the first ten amendments by how exciting they are. Which, to someone blogging about all ten in order, is incredibly demoralizing. Admittedly, the Eighth Amendment seems to buck this trend, but generally, the amendments get increasingly legally intensive and less intriguing as we move from First to Tenth.

My complaining aside, this week we have the Seventh Amendment. While this amendment, like its higher numbered counterparts, isn’t very glorious, it’s an important stipulation as to the government’s role in judicial activity. Here is the text of the Seventh Amendment:

In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

           

The most notable case relating to the Seventh Amendment took place in 1991. C. Elvin Feltner
(his parents must not have loved him) owned Krypton International Corporation, a television syndicate that owned three of its own stations. Columbia Pictures Television licensed a few of its shows to Feltner, none of which I recognize and therefore aren’t worth specifying. The three stations that Krypton operated failed to pay the appropriate royalties to Columbia, and Columbia acted to terminate the relationship and prevent Feltner from broadcasting their shows.

Image Courtesy of Sony at Wikia

Columbia sued Feltner, and the district court ruled, under a section of the Copyright Act, that Feltner was guilty and liable. The lower court awarded Columbia nearly $9 million in damages, denying Feltner’s request to a trial by jury.

As I’m sure you can imagine based on the fact that I’m covering this case, Feltner appealed. The district court’s decision was upheld by the Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court issued a writ of certiorari. I realize now I’ve never explained this term – often abbreviated as cert, granting certiorari means the Court, having analyzed the preliminary facts of the case, would like to consider the case fully.

In a unanimous decision, the Court found in favor of Feltner. For this case, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the decision, one that focused on the historical precedent for handling a case such as this one.

Feltner, in his appeal, argued that the language of the Copyright Act, stating that the award is to be determined by what “the court considers just” and according to “the court in its discretion”, indicated the need for a trial. Thomas, crotchety old man that he is, rejected that claim.

However, the Court still found in favor of Feltner. Throughout both American and English legal history, copyright cases were always held before juries in a court of common law. Scalia pointed out in his concurrence that the right to a trial by jury is thereby guaranteed in a case under the Copyright Act.

If you’ve suffered through the legalese to make it thus far, congratulations are in order. In reward, I provide you this nugget – Feltner won the case, and in reward, received a trial by jury to determine the amount of the damages to be paid. This time, Columbia was awarded almost $32 million, nearly quadruple the original amount. Feltner appealed again, but this time was shut down by the district court, and the Supreme Court did not issue cert.

Gideon v. Wainwright to Counsel

Similar to the Fifth Amendment and Miranda v. Arizona, there is really only one case to discuss when we consider the Sixth Amendment. It is one of the hallmark cases of American history, and it pertains to the right to counsel guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment – Gideon v. Wainwright.

For some background, here is the text of the Sixth Amendment:

“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.”

Bolded are the two key clauses of this amendment that have appeared most frequently in court proceedings over the years: the right to a speedy and public trial and the right to counsel. In the Gideon case, the latter clause was the deciding factor.

In 1963, Clarence Gideon, a drifter with a history of minor crimes, was charged with breaking and entering into a pool hall, a felony in Florida. Gideon requested a lawyer in his initial trial but was denied one because, according to the presiding judge, Florida only provides lawyers to indigent defendants who could face the death penalty in the case. He did the best he could to defend himself, but only so much can be expected of a man with an 8^th grade level education.

Image Courtesy of PBS

As might have been expected, Gideon was sentenced to 5 years in prison, and he appealed his case to the Florida Supreme Court, who denied his petition to have his case heard. He then appealed all the way to the US Supreme Court, claiming that his right to counsel as guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment was infringed upon.

The Supreme Court was unequivocally unwavering in its decision: 9-0 in favor of Gideon. The court found that all defendants are guaranteed the right to counsel, overturning the general opinion that this only held in cases on capital offenses. Instead, Hugo Black wrote in his decision that states must provide an attorney to all defendants charged with a felony.

In Black’s opinion, he noted that the “government hires lawyers to prosecute and defendants who have the money hire lawyers to defend are the strongest indications of the widespread belief that lawyers in criminal courts are necessities, not luxuries.” In order for the trial to be fair, as is the crux of the Sixth Amendment, each party must have representation.

After this ruling, Gideon was retried, this time with an attorney, and he was found not guilty and acquitted of all charges. In the increasingly “adversarial” legal system, according to Black, the use of lawyers is the only way to guarantee a fair and effective trial. This principle cannot be proved more definitively than the overturning of Gideon’s case once he was provided with adequate counsel.

Please Don't Use This Against Me

I apologize for this one. For the Fifth Amendment, there is no decision. There is only one case to choose: Miranda v. Arizona. It’s the landmark case, and many people don’t know enough about the origination of the eponymous Miranda Rights, so this could be more educational than cliché.

For background, I present the Fifth Amendment, in all its resplendent glory:

“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation”

With regards to the Fifth Amendment, there a few chief clauses to understand (bolded). The first pertains to double jeopardy, the notion that people can’t be retried for the same offense. The second clause is what makes this amendment infamous – protection against self-incrimination. No one can be forced to testify against them self and can therefore “plead the Fifth [Amendment]”. Finally, due process of law guarantees that the government carries out all criminal proceedings in a fair and legal way.

Now, with the legalese out of the way, let’s discuss Miranda. Ernesto Miranda was arrested in Arizona in 1963 on circumstantial evidence that implicated him as the rapist and kidnapper of an 18 year old woman. Having been detained and interrogated for over 2 hours, Miranda confessed to the crime. He put this confession to writing under a statement swearing the voluntary nature of the confession.

Image Courtesy of the National Constitution Center

Both a trial court and the Arizona Supreme Court accepted the confession as evidence and sentenced Miranda to 20-30 years in prison for his actions. However, Alvin Moore, Miranda’s lawyer, objected that by not informing Miranda orally of his right to remain silent and that his responses during the interrogation could be used against him, the evidence was not legally obtained and violated the self-incrimination clause of the Fifth Amendment.

Chief Justice Warren wrote in the opinion of the Court that “the person in custody must, prior to interrogation, be clearly informed that he has the right to remain silent, and that anything he says will be used against him in court” and that the detainee has the right to counsel. Warren made it expressly clear that if a detainee chooses to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights to counsel or against self-incrimination, the interrogation must immediately cease.

Miranda v. Arizona was a tight 5-4 case. For many of the dissenting justices, the decision was simply inane. Justice Byron White argued that “In some unknown number of cases, the Court's rule will return a killer, a rapist or other criminal to the streets and to the environment which produced him, to repeat his crime whenever it pleases him”.

To a civilian, this case might seem equally ridiculous. Miranda confessed to the crime, but was acquitted on the grounds that the evidence was obtained illegally. However, many detainees could be unaware of the legal proceedings surrounding interrogation, and the Miranda Rights that followed from this case are an integral part of legal and police actions to this day.

Mapp-ing the Fourth

I miss the glitz and glamour of the first two amendments. Free speech and the right to bear arms are two of the most well-known pieces of the Bill of Rights. I’ll be surprised (and delighted, frankly) if more than a fifth of the American people could tell me offhand that the Fourth Amendment pertains to unwarranted searches and seizures.

Here is the text of the Fourth Amendment:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Courtesy of The Week

In 1961, Dollree Mapp (probably the most ridiculous name in a case to date) was suspected of harboring a fugitive. Police arrived, with a warrant to search for the suspect. Mapp resisted, stashing the warrant under her clothes (a bold choice) and tried to prevent the search from occurring. The officers ended up detaining her and searching the house thoroughly.

Upon further search, the suspect was indeed found. However, the kicker comes when we learn that Mapp was a dirty birdy and had pornographic materials stashed in a footlocker. Back in the 60’s, while stereotypically a free time, porn was considered obscene and illegal – for more, look in to Miller v. California.

Mapp was sentenced to 1-7 years for the possession of “lewd and lascivious” materials. Immediately, she appealed this conviction on account of freedom of expression being protected by the First Amendment.

The Court basically said they didn’t care about Mapp’s First Amendment appeal. However, they used a wildly more compelling point to make their decision – were the police really looking for a suspect (presumably man-sized) in a footlocker (presumably smaller than man-sized)?

Mapp was let off on this simple idea. The police did indeed have a warrant, but that warrant was to search for a fugitive suspect and a fugitive suspect only. Clearly, the police, in the fervor that Mapp’s belligerence worked them in to, exceeded the scope of their warrant.

The real constitutional question boils down to this: under the Fourth Amendment, can the evidence of the pornographic material found in Mapp’s home be used to convict and sentence her?

The court, in a 6-3 decision on June 19^th, 1961, ruled that the evidence was illegally obtained. A landmark decision, this case codified the rules about collecting evidence in accord with the Constitution.

By far the furthest reaching implication of Mapp v. Ohio, other than encouraging people to hide their porn better, would be the exclusionary rule. According to Wex, the exclusionary rule “prevents the government from using most evidence gathered in violation of the United States Constitution”. Seemingly a valuable stipulation, this rule caused unforeseen complications for the Supreme Court in dealing with illegitimate evidence. There are many specifications to the exclusionary rule, testament to its complexity: the good faith exception, the independent source doctrine, inevitable discovery doctrine, attenuation doctrine, and qualified immunity, to name a few.

Mapp was a ground breaking case that laid the framework for the application of the Fourth Amendment to future cases. Even though good ole Dollree seems like quite the character, her case against the state of Ohio is a critical one to understanding the Fourth Amendment.

Poor Number 3

The Third Amendment is far and away one of the least implemented amendments within the Bill of Rights. I wish I didn’t have to blog about such a useless amendment, but I promised that I would outline each of the ten amendments within the Bill of Rights. I am nothing if not a man of my word.

An oft forgotten piece of legislation, the Third Amendment states that “no soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.” Simply put, soldiers can’t live in your house forcibly during peace. Even during war, the government must lawfully develop some sort of process in order to house the soldiers.

Courtesy of the Constitution Center

Given the political climate out of which the Bill of Rights originated, it is easy to see why such an amendment became part of our legal code. The oh so tyrannical British from whom we were in the process of freeing ourselves had in no way abided by a similar policy. Redcoats often stormed homes for shelter without any of this “consent of the owner” nonsense.

Considering how esoteric and inapplicable this amendment is ever since we became independent, it isn’t hard to believe that there haven’t been any Supreme Court cases decided in conjunction with the Third Amendment. However, there has been one somewhat major case regarding the Third Amendment, decided by the US Circuit Court of Appeals: Engblom v. Carey. Even the name Engblom sounds somewhat ridiculous.

In this case, New York State correctional officers were on strike, and National Guardsmen filled their places in some roles. At more than one location, the striking employees were evicted as the guardsmen came to take their responsibility and use their housing as well.

Engblom, the original prison worker, claimed that the government issued National Guardsmen illegally quartered in her home, which she was a tenant of while working for the prison. The state, argued under the name Carey (the then governor Hugh Carey), asserted that because the State evicted Engblom on account that she was striking, they had the right to quarter their “soldiers” (loosely defined) in the former residence.

The state ended up with the worse argument. The court recognized that Engblom’s Third Amendment rights were infringed upon. However, Engblom still lost the case due to a technicality on qualified immunity. This principle states that the defendants, acting on behalf of the state, were immune to any illegal actions that they committed unknowingly.

Even when the Third Amendment gets called in to play, it still doesn’t even really matter. What a rough life for good ole number 3.

While little was established by this case except that the government has an incredibly poor understanding of what a soldier is, there is one important lesson – technicalities matter. Who cares how strong your case is – getting a case decided for some minor wrongdoing involved or a little known principle such as qualified immunity can be a deal breaker. Law is a game of inches.

What's a Militia?

For some reason, no one seems to understand what it means to have a well-regulated militia. The Second Amendment has, for some reason, one of the most controversial pieces of legislation in American history. It reads:

“A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Courtesy of FunnyJunk

Most people have taken to reducing this text to simply “the right to bear arms”, but the militia part is far and away more important in my mind. Whether or not I support guns for all, the amendment itself does not allow for it.

A thorough analysis of the text of the amendment itself makes it clear that the right of the people to keep and bear Arms only stems from the need for a regulated militia in order to protect the freedom of American citizens, which is no longer a reality of modern life.

But, I digress from the ramblings of an English pedant and turn towards our court case for the week: DC vs. Heller, argued in 2008 by the Roberts Court.

In this case, Dick Heller was a police officer in Washington DC who carried a gun on the job but was denied a permit to have a gun at his home. Heller, the man of the law that he undoubtedly was, sued the District of Columbia for violating his Second Amendment Rights to bear arms in the provisions of the DC Code that forbade licensing of handguns and required already licensed guns to be kept nonfunctional when in a home setting. That’s a lot of words – basically, he was bitter he couldn’t have a gun at home and decided his rights were being infringed upon.

The Roberts Court concluded that the ban in the DC Code was unconstitutional. They claimed that the first clause mentioning the militia is “prefatory”. I believe they made that word up in an attempt to trick us. The concurring argument asserts that to ban guns form the people and restrict them for actual law enforcement/military personnel could recreate the type of fear-striking government that the Framers must have been avoiding.

I’ve always loved a good John Paul Stevens dissent, and this one fits the bill: Stevens claimed in his opinion that “the most natural reading of the amendment is that it protects the right to keep and bear arms for certain military purposes but does not curtail the legislature’s power to regulate nonmilitary use and ownership of weapons.” These justices are wordy people, but an expert shortener – he’s saying that the Amendment applies to MILITIA.

To me, this makes the most sense. Whether or not I support the right to firearms for personal use is an issue I have yet to truly make sense of, but from a reading of the Second Amendment, I see no way in which we are guaranteed an all-encompassing right to guns, especially the automatic behemoths that are far above the threshold for self-defense.

I’m curious to what you think in the comments. Did the Court get it right? I’ve always been intrigued by people’s different (mis)interpretations of the wording of the Second Amendment. It’s definitely a toughie.

Down Goes Fraser

Welcome to a fresh and new passion blog: “Cruel and Unusual”, a ten part stroll through the Bill of Rights, one of the founding documents of our American ideals regarding personal privilege and the “oppressive” government that abridges those privileges. To many of you, this blog might come off as a nauseating flashback to a high school government class. Don’t worry – I plan on selecting some of the most interesting cases, one for each amendment, and reviewing the Supreme Court’s application of the amendment. I hope you stick along for the ride.

Where else would we start then with the First Amendment? Guaranteeing that Congress will not legislate prohibiting a litany of practices, including religion, speech, press, assembly, and petitioning, this first amendment is the one most frequently quoted by fourth graders trying to get away with swearing.

Beyond a shadow of a doubt, the case that first comes to my mind when analyzing the first amendment would be Bethel School District No. 403 v. Fraser. Argued in 1986, this case is both a prime example of the application of the First Amendment and an entertaining court case for anyone who is as immature as the average teenager – in this case, Matthew Fraser.

Fraser, a senior at Bethel High School in Washington, nominated a classmate, Jeff Kuhlman, for a student government position. At an assembly with the entire school present (some 600 students, including many innocent little freshman), Fraser gave a speech that included the following bits of gold:

• “I know a man who is firm. He’s firm in his pants, he’s firm in his shirt, his character is firm…but most of all, his belief in you, the students of Bethel, is firm.”
• “Kuhlman is a man who takes his point and pounds it in…he’ll take an issue and nail it to the wall…he drives hard, pushing and pushing until finally he succeeds.”
• “Jeff is a man who will go to the very end – even the climax, for each and every one of you.”

Evidently, school administrators were less than pleased with Bethel’s innuendo riddled speech. The high school punished (not like that) Fraser for his breaking of Bethel’s rule against “interfering with the educational process … including the use of obscene or profane language”.

Fraser in front of his school - Glogster

Clearly, Fraser broke this rule. The constitutional question, however, stems from whether or not a school (particularly a public school, thereby affiliated with the government) is able to discipline a student for speech, or is it a violation of the First Amendment.

Contrary to the decision made years earlier in Tinker (not sure how the Warren court took that name seriously), the court did not support the student’s right to expression, rather asserting that Fraser’s lewd speech crippled the school’s ability to “teach fundamental values”. Chief Justice Burger did admit that the First Amendment may protect an adult’s right to make such offensive comments (not that many adults would be so ridiculously immature), but that children in a public school cannot be guaranteed the same protection under the law.

To summarize, don’t say stupid stuff in school. Public school is already a cesspool of corruption in its own right – if you’re a student, you might not be guaranteed the rights that the First Amendment outlines when in an educational setting.