True Threats, Advocacy, and the First Amendment

Mark Strasser, Capital University Law School, has published Advocacy, True Threats, and the Constitution at 38 Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly 339 (2011). Here is the abstract.

Brandenburg v. Ohio is thought by many to offer very robust speech protections, but the true threat exception to the First Amendment can swallow up much of the protection that Brandenburg offers. Regrettably, the Court has failed to offer guidelines to help determine when Brandenburg rather than true threat analysis applies, which has caused lower courts to reach radically different results in relevantly similar cases. Unless the Court addresses the current inconsistencies in the jurisprudence, the interests in security and in robust debate will both continue to be sacrificed.

The full text is not available from SSRN.