Talk:Cantwell v. Connecticut

	Freedom of speech portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Freedom of speech, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Freedom of speech on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Freedom of speechWikipedia:WikiProject Freedom of speechTemplate:WikiProject Freedom of speechFreedom of speech articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Connecticut High‑importance

	Connecticut portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Connecticut, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Connecticut on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ConnecticutWikipedia:WikiProject ConnecticutTemplate:WikiProject ConnecticutConnecticut articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

U.S. Supreme Court cases Low‑importance

	This article is part of WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases, a collaborative effort to improve articles related to Supreme Court cases and the Supreme Court. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page.U.S. Supreme Court casesWikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court casesTemplate:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court casesU.S. Supreme Court articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the importance scale.

Law Low‑importance

	Law portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Law, an attempt at providing a comprehensive, standardised, pan-jurisdictional and up-to-date resource for the legal field and the subjects encompassed by it.LawWikipedia:WikiProject LawTemplate:WikiProject Lawlaw articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Christianity: Witnesses Low‑importance

	Christianity portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Christianity, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Christianity on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ChristianityWikipedia:WikiProject ChristianityTemplate:WikiProject ChristianityChristianity articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by WikiProject Jehovah's Witnesses (assessed as Mid-importance).

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)[reply]

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)[reply]
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)[reply]

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. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.6.113.116 (talk) 20:42, 14 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright problem

This article has been revised as part of a large-scale clean-up project of multiple article copyright infringement. (See the investigation subpage) Content was identified as copied from [1]. Removed text must not be restored. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions must be deleted. Contributors may use sources as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously. Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:16, 19 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]