endment, a decision which on appeal was affirmed by the Supreme
Court in Village of Skokie v. National Socialist Party of America, 46 L.W. 2396 (1978).
According to Cochran et al., this case provided "the coup de grace to the fighting words doctrine" (395). That case and another case decided by the Court in 1971 in which the conviction of a draft resister for wearing a jacket containing the words 'Fuck the Draft,' Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971) "have very nearly transformed the political interpretation of the freedom of speech clause to embrace any form of expressive utterance, regardless of its relevance to the democratic process" (Cochran et al. 396). Justice William Brennan in another case expressed the rationale of the Court for such decision in his opinion for the majority in New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964), when he said that the constitutional protection of free speech reflects "a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust and open." Technically, however, while Beau
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