"Imminent lawless action" is a standard currently used, and that was established by the United States Supreme Court in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), for defining the limits of freedom of speech. Brandenburg clarified what constituted a "clear and present danger", the standard established by Schenck v. United States (1919), and overruled Whitney v. California (1927), which had held that speech that merely advocated violence could be made illegal. Under the imminent lawless action test, speech is not protected by the First Amendment if the speaker intends to incite a violation of the law that is both imminent and likely. While the precise meaning of "imminent" may be ambiguous in some cases, the court provided later clarification in Hess v. Indiana (1973). In this case, the court found that Hess's words did not fall outside the limits of protected speech, in part, because his speech "amounted to nothing more than advocacy of illegal action at some indefinite future time," and therefore did not meet the imminence requirement.
Famous quotes containing the words imminent, lawless and/or action:
“This long last childhood
Nothing provides for.
What can it do each day
But hunt that imminent door
Through which all that understood
Has hidden away?”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“The true, prescriptive artist strives after artistic truth; the lawless artist, following blind instinct, after an appearance of naturalness. The one leads to the highest peaks of art, the other to its lowest depths.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“We call the intention good which is right in itself, but the action is good, not because it contains within it some good, but because it issues from a good intention. The same act may be done by the same man at different times. According to the diversity of his intention, however, this act may be at one time good, at another bad.”
—Peter Abelard (1079–1142)