Nazis in Skokie: Freedom, Community, and the First Amendment

Donald Alexander Downs

Nazis in Skokie: Freedom, Community, and the First Amendment
Format
Hardback
Publisher
University of Notre Dame Press
Country
United States
Published
31 March 1985
Pages
228
ISBN
9780268009687

Nazis in Skokie: Freedom, Community, and the First Amendment

Donald Alexander Downs

In 1977, a Chicago-based Nazi group announced its plans to demonstrate in Skokie, Illinois, the home of hundreds of Holocaust survivors. The shocked survivor community rose in protest and the issue went to court, with the ACLU defending the Nazis’ right to free speech. The court ruled in the Nazis’ favor. According to the content neutrality doctrine governing First Amendment jurisprudence, the Nazis’ insults and villifications were neutral –not the issue, as far as the law was concerned. But to Downs, they are at issue. In Nazis in Skokie he challenges the doctrine of content neutrality and presents an argument for the minimal abridgment of free speech when that speech in intentionally harmful. Draawing on his interviews with participants in the conflict, Downs combines detailed social history with informed legal interpretation in a provocative examination of an abiding tension between individual freedom and community integrity, and between procedural and substantive justice.

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