ICYMI: Barbas on The Story of Beauharnais v. Illinois

ICYMI: Samantha Barbas, University of Iowa Collee of Law, has published The Story Of Beauharnais v. Illinois at 2 Journal of Free Speech Law 420 (2023). Here is the abstract.

In 1952, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark First Amendment decision in Beauharnais v. Illinois, upholding an Illinois hate speech law. Beauharnais, involving a white supremacist “hate group” leader in Chicago, was the Supreme Court’s first encounter with racist speech. The Illinois statute, enacted in 1917, was one of several hate speech or “group defamation” laws that existed in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. Commentators believed that the Supreme Court’s approval of the Illinois statute would lead other jurisdictions to enact hate speech laws. Yet Beauharnais facilitated the demise of hate speech laws. This article tells the story of Beauharnais v. Illinois and explains why the Supreme Court’s ruling helped bring about the end of hate speech laws in America.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.