During my first year of law school, one of the required courses was Constitutional Law.
We spent a lot of the semester learning the protections and guarantees of Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Religion.
We spent no time studying the Second Amendment since, at that time, the right of the government to impose reasonable restriction on firearms had been well settled for over half a century.
Of course, that was long before the rise of Antonin Scalia and the death of common sense on the United States Supreme Court.
One of the more controversial First Amendment cases that arose at that time was one involving the American Nazi Party’s seeking a permit to march through Skokie, Illinois.
When the City of Skokie denied the permit, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the City on behalf of the Nazis and Skokie was ordered to issue the permit and allow the march based on the Nazis right to freedom of Speech.
` The Nazis didn’t pick Skokie as the sight of their march because it was scenic or a media magnet.
They picked Skokie because it had the highest concentration of holocaust survivors as residents anywhere in the United States.
The Nazis intent wasn’t to parade, it was to provoke and traumatize.
We have seen this repeatedly since then.
The Westover Baptist Church whose membership is composed of the Phelps Family insist on demonstrating at the funerals of military veterans killed in combat proclaiming these dead heroes were punished by God for America’s sins.
They also attempted to protest at the funerals of the victims massacred at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
There is nothing “Christian” about inflicting pain on people during their worst moment in life.
As these pests persisted in there cruelty, the Hells Angels motorcycle gang volunteered to act as a security buffer to keep them away from the mourners.
Most recently, we saw this in Charlottesville, Virginia this past summer, when a collection of Nazis, white supremacists and other reprobates, that we euphemistically call “the alt-right,” marched through the streets of the University of Virginia Campus, carrying torches and chanting “Jews will not replace us,” “Blood and soil” and other racist and Nazi chants.
In the ensuing clash with counter demonstrators, one of the Nazis drove his car into a crowd, killing an innocent young woman.
Unlike Trump, I don’t believe that there were “many good people” among that group or that their motives in marching through Charlottesville carrying torches and chanting those slogans were pure.
We are about to find out much more about that.
This past October a civil conspiracy lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Charlottesville, on behalf of nine people who were hurt in the violence, against the organizers of the demonstration seeking to hold them responsible for the injuries they sustained.
The name of the case is Sines v. Kessler.
The lawsuit contends that the violence that erupted was no accident.
Pre-trial discovery has revealed numerous postings on various social media web sites in which participants in the march proclaimed their readiness to “crack skulls” and bring firearms that ”could shoot clean through a crowd at least four deep.”
Others proclaimed their intent to bring “wrenches, pipes and wooden sticks.”
Among the defendants named in the lawsuit is Richard Spencer, who rose to fame by leading a room full of supporters in the chant “Heil Trump,” at a gathering in Washington, D.C. close to Trump’s inauguration.
Fittingly, Spencer can’t find a lawyer who will represent him in this lawsuit, so he is representing himself.
I suspect he will inject new vitality into Clarence Darrow’s observation that “A man who represents himself has a fool for a client.”
In normal times, one would expect the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department would have investigated and sued the defendants that organized the March and violence.
Regrettably, there is nothing normal about having Jeff Sessions in charge of the Justice Department.
My older brother Jim is fond of saying that “the right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins.”
The wisdom in that observation is self-evident.
As I thought about the Nazi march in Skokie and Phelps family harassing the bereaved at military funerals, it dawned on me that while there might be a constitutional right to free speech, there is no constitutional right to police protection.
So, if you insist on marching through Skokie or harassing people at funerals, you might discover that there are consequences that you haven’t thought about.
At this writing the white supremacists that are being sued in Charlottesville, are whining that the purpose of the lawsuit, is to “silence them and destroy them financially.”
I’ll settle for that.