The Volokh Conspiracy

The Supreme Court itself created this mindset by saying that even core political speech at the heart of the First Amendment can be banned by a speech restriction that is justified by a "compelling interest" that is no broader than needed to achieve that "interest," which may itself be ridiculously broad and trivial. See, e.g., Hans Bader, Bong Hits 4 Jesus: The First Amendment Takes a Hit, 2007 Cato Supreme Court Review 133, 147-49 (2007) (listing range of trivial interests the Supreme Court has deemed "compelling," and justices' own confession that what qualifies as a compelling interest is essentially standardless).

How about cut out the unnecessary preposition and adverb: The law suppresses speech and beliefs that the First Amendment protects. Of course, depending on the underlying issue, the "in an impermissible way" verbiage could be doing some work. Thus, you could write: The law suppresses speech and beliefs that the First Amendment protects in an impermissible way.

Thus, you could write: The law suppresses speech and beliefs that the First Amendment protects in an impermissible way.

That is just as bad!

In an impermissible way, [The law] suppresses speech and beliefs that are protected by the First Amendment.

heck, I know 10th grade English teachers that would chastise (probably not yell, but only because of context) sophomores for writing sentences like that.

It's clearly bad construction in that it implies "impermissible way" modifies protected, when the author almost certainly meant that the suppression was impermissible.

Why not Lolcat style?

"I are Impermissibly suprressing your first amendment speeches?"


It'll fit right in with the other law related lol cat's I've accumulated.
For Example Click Here

If the phrase was intended to hilite the erosion of free speech, then the words chosen might be the best way of phrasing it after all. Seems to be working here.

Well, you found it noteworthy enough to comment on it.

"I know partners at major law firms who would be yelling at the associate who wrote a sentence like that."

And I suspect there are partners at major law firms *writing* sentences like that...

"The law suppresses speech and beliefs protected by the First Amendment."

The fact that the speech and beliefs are protected, means that the infringement is impermissible, therefore the word impermissibly adds nothing substantive.

Jon's rewrite is okay, but I would get rid of "impermissibly"


The other problem with the sentence, apart from the misplaced modifier, is the author's use of passive voice. I generally only use the passive voice when I am deliberately trying to be ambiguous about who did what.

My point in the above comments was only that in the eyes of the Supreme Court, there is, oddly, such a thing as a "permissible" suppression of protected classes of speech, whenever the Supreme Court makes up a compelling interest to justify it, since even under so-called strict scrutiny, protected classes of speech can be banned to promote a "compelling state interest" (and as I noted in 2007 Cato Supreme Court Review 133, 147-149 (2007), the courts consider almost any legitimate end a "compelling state interest").

I was not saying that the case in which the brief was filed involves core political speech, or even protected speech.

My comments were about First Amendment standards in general, not the merits of the case in particular, and were not an endorsement of the legal position advocated by defense counsel in the case in which the brief was filed.

We could always resolve the ambiguity this way: The First Amendment impermissibly protects speech and beliefs that are suppressed by [this law].

Nothing wrong with the sentence. Its what us conservatives facists have been saying for decades: The 1st amendment does protect speech in an impermissable way.

Constitutional Crisis:

Impermissibly suppresses protected speech the law does; protected by the First Amendment they are.

I just realized I made an error in the second clause:

Impermissibly suppresses protected speech and beliefs the law does; protected by the First Amendment are they. Sorry for any confusion.

I meant, of course, "bought" your book.

COme on, people how about a little pizazz?

IMPERMISSIBLE!!!!! This law suppresses First Amendment speech!!! And I mean that in a bad way!!!