Academic

Really Bad Advice

By Calvin Massey

According to this A.P.  news account the Marinette County, Wisconsin District Attorney, Allen Brey, advised police that they could remove a US flag being flown upside down by a businessman to protest the town's refusal to grant him a liquor license for his mewly renovated restaurant.  The police did so.  the next day they returned the flag.  The rationale?  It was the Fourth of July, and the upside down flag was upsetting people.  Said the local sheriff: "It's illegal to cause a disruption." 

If these people ever took Constitutional Law they must have slept through the free speech section.  Perhaps they read Feiner but failed to grasp Terminiello or any of the symbolic speech cases, such as Johnson v. Texas.   This grasp of basic free speech law is so abysmal it would merit a failing grade in my Con Law course. 

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on July 11, 2009 (boomark / email).