Cohen v. California was a First Amendment case decided in 1971 that examined whether or not the use of obscenity in political statements was protected speech.

Free Speech

Many people believe the First Amendment means that you have complete freedom of speech. However, the courts have, over the years, limited speech in certain contexts such as slander, libel, ''fighting words'' and obscenity, and other cases that makeup First Amendment jurisprudence. These limits have proven to be difficult to define as what is obscene or inciting speech to one person might not be considered as such by another person. In 1971, the court ruled on whether the ''f'' word was considered obscene in the case of Cohen v. California.

Summary

Paul Cohen was a store worker who opposed the Vietnam War and had a jacket that read ''F--- the Draft. Stop the War.'' Cohen was arrested for wearing the jacket and sentenced to 30 days in jail. Cohen appealed his conviction to the California Supreme Court and then appealed the dismissal of his case to the U.S. Supreme Court on February 22, 1971.

Ruling and Opinion

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of Cohen and struck down the California law that he was convicted under as unconstitutional. Justice Harlan authored the majority opinion and joined by Justices Douglas, Brennan, Marshall, and Stewart. Justice Blackmun wrote the dissent and joined by Justices Burger and Black with Justice White joining in part.

Justice Harlan explained the court's ruling by noting that the threat posed of confrontation was a theoretical concern of violence over the content of Cohen's jacket. Additionally, when Cohen was arrested, he was not engaged in any behavior that would be reasonably construed as disturbing the peace. Harlan discussed the difficulty in establishing what crossed the line noting in a famously quoted line from his opinion, ''For, while the particular four-letter word being litigated here is perhaps more distasteful than most others of its genre, it is nevertheless often true that one man's vulgarity is another's lyric.''

Justice Harlan concluded his dissent, noting that the risk of censorship, in this case, outweighed the benefits gained to society by prohibiting such speech. He wrote:

''Finally, and in the same vein, we cannot indulge the facile assumption that one can forbid particular words without also running a substantial risk of suppressing ideas in the process. Indeed, governments might soon seize upon the censorship of particular words as a convenient guise for banning the expression of unpopular views. We have been able, as noted above, to discern little social benefit that might result from running the risk of opening the door to such grave results.''