Flag Desecration
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Flag Desecration
The issue of flag desecration has been and continues to be a
highly controversial issue; on the one side there are those who
believe that the flag is a unique symbol for our nation which
should be preserved at all costs, while on the other are those
who believe that flag burning is a form of free speech and that
any legislation designed to prevent this form of expression is
contrary to the ideals of the First Amendment to our
Constitution.
Shawn Eichman, as well as the majority of the United States
Supreme Court, is in the latter of these groups. Many citizens
believe that the freedom of speech granted to them in the First
Amendment means that they can express themselves in any manner
they wish as long as their right of expression does not infringe
on the rights of others; others, however, believe that there are
exceptions to this right of speech. Such constitutional issues
need to be worked out by the Supreme Court, which uses its powers
of constitutional interpretation and judicial review to outline
the underpinnings of the Constitution and interpret the law.
The case which acted as an impetus for Eichman’s actions was
that of Texas v. Johnson. “In 1984, in Dallas, Gregory Johnson,
a member of the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade, a Maoists
society, publicly burned a stolen American flag to protests the
re-nomination of Ronald Reagan as the Republican candidate” (Levy
217). The police consequently arrested Johnson not for his
message but for his manner in delivering it; he had violated a
Texas statute that prohibited the desecration of a venerated
object by acts that “the offender knows will seriously offend on
or more persons” (Downs 83). Johnson had hoped to capture
America’s attention with this burning, and he did; however, his
protest earned him more than a moment in the national spotlight.
“Under Texas’s tough anti-flag-burning statute, Johnson was fine
$2,000 and sentenced to a year in prison” (Relin 16).
In Texas v. Johnson a majority of the Supreme Court
considered for the first time whether the First Amendment
protects desecration of the United States flag as a form of
symbolic speech. A sharply divided Court had previously dealt
with symbolic speech cases that involved alleged misuses of the
flag. While “the Court had ruled in favor of the defendants in
those cases (Street v. New York, 1969; Smith v. Goguen, 1974;
Spence v. Washington, 1974), it had done so on narrow grounds,
refusing to confront the ultimate question...
The complete article is about 5931 words and 23.72 pages long.
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