Cohen v. California

Since the language on Cohen's jacket did not fall under any of the exceptions to First Amendment protection, California was prohibited from punishing him solely because of the content of that language. The only issue remaining in the case was whether or not the state had the power to preserve the cleanliness of public speech. But this, the Court said, the state could not do.

First, the principle contended for by the State seems inherently boundless. How is one to distinguish this from any other offensive word? Surely the State has no right to cleanse public debate to the point where it is grammatically palatable to the most squeamish among us . . . one man's vulgarity is another's lyric . . . Additionally . . . much linguistic expression serves a dual communicative function: it conveys not only ideas . . . but otherwise inexpressible emotions as well . . . We cannot sanction the view that the Constitution, while solicitous of the cognitive content of individual speech, has little or no regard for that emotive function which . . . may often be the more important element of the overall message . . .

Cohen is thought of as a landmark case because it sought to protect speech which could be either provocative or obscene but which, taken in context, is neither. By prohibiting the manner of expression in a case such as this, government runs the impermissible risk of censoring the message. What remains unstated but still arguably implicit in the Court's opinion is that at the heart of Robert Paul Cohen's "speech" lies the expression of a political sentiment--strong disagreement with an unpopular war--which is the very type of speech the First Amendment was most clearly designed to protect.