Incitement Vs. Fighting Words
Incitement is a related doctrine, allowing the government to prohibit advocacy of unlawful actions if the advocacy is both intended to and likely to cause immediate breach of the peace. The modern standard was defined in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), where the Court reversed the conviction of a Ku Klux Klan leader accused of advocating violence against racial minorities and the national government. The Ohio statute under which the conviction occurred was overturned as unconstitutional because "the mere abstract teaching of the moral propriety or even moral necessity for a resort to force and violence, is not the same as preparing a group for violent action and steeling it to such action."
The difference between incitement and fighting words is subtle, focusing on the intent of the speaker. Inciting speech is characterized by the speaker's intent to make someone else the instrument of his or her unlawful will. Fighting words, by contrast, are intended to cause the hearer to react to the speaker.
Read more about this topic: Fighting Words
Famous quotes containing the words fighting and/or words:
“You listen to artists fighting with each other, competing to the death like gladiators, in order to see who is going to get into a show, who is going to make it, who isn’t: who is going to get a full-page ad and who is going to get a half-page. Then I think, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to go off somewhere and just do your work?””
—Howardena Pindell (b. 1943)
“Often have brief words laid men low and then raise them up.”
—Sophocles (497–406/5 B.C.)