1,721,233 research outputs found
Counterman v. Colorado: True Threats, Speech Harms, and Missed Opportunities
No full textSome Supreme Court cases amount, at their best, to missed opportunities. The Supreme Court’s recent case Counterman v. Colorado resolved, quite dubiously, one particular issue of mens rea. In the course of doing so, however, the Court ignored a variety of clearly presented issues of even greater significance.
The Counterman case involved a state court criminal conviction for issuing a true threat of violence, or more simply, a true threat. True threats, as defined and limited by the Court, comprise a narrow, traditionally constitutionally unprotected category of speech. Nevertheless, the majority in Counterman unnecessarily and unadvisedly extended a substantial measure of constitutional protection to issuing true threats. This result was obtained not through applying the overbreadth or vagueness doctrines, or by working through the logic and purposes of free speech, but by dubiously selecting and imposing a particular mens rea requirement in criminal true threat cases.
The constitutionally required mens rea was held, more specifically, to be that of a subjective level wherein the defendant must consciously understand the statement’s threatening nature and act with reckless disregard of the substantial risk of the speech being construed as a violent threat.6 More simply, the Court required what this Articles refers to as a “conscious reckless disregard” mens rea standard
Counterman v. Colorado: True Threats, Speech Harms, and Missed Opportunities
No full textSome Supreme Court cases amount, at their best, to missed opportunities. The Supreme Court’s recent case Counterman v. Colorado resolved, quite dubiously, one particular issue of mens rea. In the course of doing so, however, the Court ignored a variety of clearly presented issues of even greater significance.
The Counterman case involved a state court criminal conviction for issuing a true threat of violence, or more simply, a true threat. True threats, as defined and limited by the Court, comprise a narrow, traditionally constitutionally unprotected category of speech. Nevertheless, the majority in Counterman unnecessarily and unadvisedly extended a substantial measure of constitutional protection to issuing true threats. This result was obtained not through applying the overbreadth or vagueness doctrines, or by working through the logic and purposes of free speech, but by dubiously selecting and imposing a particular mens rea requirement in criminal true threat cases.
The constitutionally required mens rea was held, more specifically, to be that of a subjective level wherein the defendant must consciously understand the statement’s threatening nature and act with reckless disregard of the substantial risk of the speech being construed as a violent threat.6 More simply, the Court required what this Articles refers to as a “conscious reckless disregard” mens rea standard
Q&A with Jessica Counterman (MFA Painting)
No full texthttps://egrove.olemiss.edu/art_qa/1038/thumbnail.jp
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Counterman v. Colorado: True Threats, Speech Harms, and Missed Opportunities
No full textSome Supreme Court cases amount, at their best, to missed opportunities. The Supreme Court’s recent case Counterman v. Colorado resolved, quite dubiously, one particular issue of mens rea. In the course of doing so, however, the Court ignored a variety of clearly presented issues of even greater significance.
The Counterman case involved a state court criminal conviction for issuing a true threat of violence, or more simply, a true threat. True threats, as defined and limited by the Court, comprise a narrow, traditionally constitutionally unprotected category of speech. Nevertheless, the majority in Counterman unnecessarily and unadvisedly extended a substantial measure of constitutional protection to issuing true threats. This result was obtained not through applying the overbreadth or vagueness doctrines, or by working through the logic and purposes of free speech, but by dubiously selecting and imposing a particular mens rea requirement in criminal true threat cases.
The constitutionally required mens rea was held, more specifically, to be that of a subjective level wherein the defendant must consciously understand the statement’s threatening nature and act with reckless disregard of the substantial risk of the speech being construed as a violent threat.6 More simply, the Court required what this Articles refers to as a “conscious reckless disregard” mens rea standard
THE IMPACT OF COUNTERMAN V. COLORADO ON STALKING PROSECUTIONS IN IDAHO
No full textThis Note reflects on the recent United States Supreme Court decision in Counterman v. Colorado, which held that in order to find liability for true threat crimes the state or plaintiff must prove the defendant’s subjective intent to threaten the recipient. The holding creates a new, additional burden on the movant to prove intent, where before, the majority of state and circuit courts only required an objective, reasonable person standard to prove intent in true threat cases. Idaho, being one of the states that previously used a reasonable person standard in prosecuting true threats, is affected by this holding in that the state in stalking prosecutions must now prove beyond a reasonable doubt the defendant’s subjective intent in threatening the recipient. Accordingly, this Note evaluates the impact of the Counterman holding on Idaho stalking statutes and the effects this will have for future prosecutions in the state
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The First Amendment Problem of Stalking: Counterman, Stevens, and the Limits of History and Tradition
No full textIn Counterman v. Colorado, the Supreme Court decided an imaginary case. It held that Billy Ray Counterman’s conviction could not stand because it did not meet the First Amendment requirements for prosecutions based on threats. But, in fact, Counterman was not convicted for making threats. He was convicted of stalking, under a law that does not require that the defendant threaten anyone to be guilty of the crime. This Article argues that the Supreme Court’s confusion about the most basic facts of the Counterman case was not an aberration but instead reflects broader pathologies in First Amendment jurisprudence. These pathologies are a consequence of the impoverished view of the First Amendment’s boundaries depicted in the Court’s recent decisions, which suggest that the First Amendment’s doctrinal terrain can be described by a simple list of historically unprotected categories. These thin accounts of the First Amendment and the doctrinal distortions it creates are not inevitable, however. The Article argues for an alternative, more nuanced and dynamic approach to the question of the First Amendment’s boundaries—one that rests on a richer understanding of the traditions of speech regulation in the United States—and sketches out its implications for the law of stalking and, potentially, many other areas of free speech law. The takeaway is that courts do not need to distort the facts of the cases they adjudicate to craft a First Amendment jurisprudence that is doctrinally coherent, historically informed, and normatively desirable. </p
Beck provides insight into Supreme Court case Counterman v. Colorado
No full textAmong the cases to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court will be Counterman v. Colorado, No. 21-138.
The case focuses on whether to establish that a statement is a true threat unprotected by the First Amendment, the government must show that the speaker subjectively knew or intended the threatening nature of the statement, or whether it is enough to show that an objective reasonable person would regard the statement as a threat of violence.
What is the chief legal question in the case? Counterman v. Colorado is about the rule that true threats are not protected by the First Amendment. The issue is whether the speaker has to subjectively know or intend that others understand the comments as threatening, or whether it is enough that a reasonable person would view the words as a threat of violence.
What are the key arguments of the case?
The petitioner claims that he did not mean to threaten anyone and therefore his speech should be protected by the First Amendment, even if others found the comments intimidating. The petitioner argues that allowing him to be prosecuted in this case threatens First Amendment values because people will self-censor to avoid the risk that someone else will misunderstand what they are trying to communicate.
On the other hand, if a listener could reasonably understand a person\u27s comments as threatening, they may experience the kind of fear for personal safety the true threats exception is designed to prevent, whether or not that was what the speaker intended.
What are the possible impacts of the case? Why do they matter? The case could potentially play a significant role in cases arising from domestic disputes
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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