Cert. granted in Snyder v. Phelps.

[hamilton02 at aol.com]

Setting aside the facts of this particular case, do you think that local government could regulate "speech directed at a grieving family or decedent during the funeral"?  Thus, whether the speech is positive, negative, or neutral with respect to the decedent, the decedent's family, or whoever, it could be suppressed.  In other words, what about a right of privacy around funerals?  

Marci








-----Original Message-----
From: Volokh, Eugene <VOLOKH at law.ucla.edu>
To: 'religionlaw at lists.ucla.edu' <religionlaw at lists.ucla.edu>
Sent: Mon, Mar 8, 2010 3:00 pm
Subject: Re: Cert. granted in Snyder v. Phelps.



 
 

From: Volokh, Eugene 
Sent: Monday, March 08, 2010 11:46 AM
To: 'religionlaw at lists.ucla.edu'
Subject: RE: Cert. granted in Snyder v. Phelps.

 
            The trouble is that the location of the speech was (1) partly on the Web, and (2) partly 1000 feet away from the funeral.  Unless the Court is prepared to say that any speech about a funeral that’s 1000 feet from the funeral is regulable, the only way it can uphold this verdict is by concluding that the “solemnity needed at funerals” is interfered with by any speech – including speech that is actually not seen at the time by the plaintiff (the plaintiff testified that he couldn’t see the 1000-feet-away protest) – that harshly criticizes the decedent.  So I can’t quite see how we can avoid “looking at this from the speech side.”
 
            Eugene
 


From: religionlaw-bounces at lists.ucla.edu [mailto:religionlaw-bounces at lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of hamilton02 at aol.com
Sent: Monday, March 08, 2010 11:35 AM
To: religionlaw at lists.ucla.edu
Subject: Re: Cert. granted in Snyder v. Phelps.

 

I wonder if the Justices have taken the case to give guidance on what local and state governments may do to protect funeral-goers.

Instead of looking at this from the speech side, I would tend to look at it from the perspective of the location of the speech.

Surely government may create and enforce the conditions for solemnity needed at funerals.  Such conditions would apply whether 

the content of the interfering speech (or noise) was negative as in this case or positive (say the deceased is a rock star and the interference is coming

from groupies).  Fundamental common sense says that funerals can be protected in this way and that what has transpired in

these cases generally should be capable of being deterred.  

 

Marci

 

Marci A. Hamilton

Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law

Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law

Yeshiva University



_______________________________________________
o post, send message to Religionlaw at lists.ucla.edu
o subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see 
ttp://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw
Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private.  
nyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can 
ead the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the 
essages to others.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ucla.edu/pipermail/religionlaw/attachments/20100308/8524acde/attachment.htm>