Talk:National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 5 October 2018 and 12 December 2018. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Schoe043. Peer reviewers: Lilyzzf.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:57, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

clean up
This page reads like a biased highschool essay. 151.185.60.250 (talk) 00:30, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * It certainly does, and whole section are uncited. I've tagged and removed some POV. if someone disputes that they can either cite it or discuss why the tags should go off.Lihaas (talk) 14:56, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

case questions
Isn't skokie the plaintiff--> meaning that the order should be reversed. anyone know how to do that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Crudnick (talk • contribs) 00:05, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

No, the National Socialist Party of America (aka Nazis) were the plaintiff. They were complaining about an injunction. The injunction declared it illegal to march in a Nazi uniform, display the swastika, and distribute leaflets encouraging hatred of Jews. The Nazis complained that an injunction like that is unconstitutional because the injunction restricted their (the Nazis) right to free speech. The Supreme Court eventually agreed that the 1st Amendment protects their right to do those things. Petershank (talk) 06:14, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Was it really a 5-4 ruling?
I just got done reading the opinion and the dissent. As I read it the 5-4 decision was about whether or not the federal district court was correct to intervene, however, the language seems to stipulate that indeed, their First Amendment rights were injured. But IANAL, so I really cannot claim to know how the court communicates in such cases. "I do not disagree with the Court that the provisions of the injunction issued by the Circuit Court of Cook County are extremely broad, and I would expect that if the Illinois appellate courts follow cases such as Freedman v. Maryland, 380 U.S. 51 (1965), and Nebraska Press Assn. v. Stuart, 423 U.S. 1319 (1975), relied upon by the Court, the injunction will be at least substantially modified by them." NathanZook (talk) 09:09, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

You make a good point about the comments inserted into their statement by 3 of the 4 dissenters from the per curiam. I will add some language to the article clarifying that. (You are correct about the point on which the Justices divided, that is, the jurisdiction of the U.S. (federal) Supreme Court to intervene in a state-court case at that preliminary stage of the proceedings. The point on which they divided with respect to that issue is quite technical, not of general interest IMO, and not relevant to the point of the Wikipedia article.) PDGPA (talk) 16:33, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Ideas for additional sources
Here are three new sources that could be incorporated into this page. If anyone has any other suggestions, please include below.

Downs, Donald Alexander. Nazis in Skokie: Freedom, Community, and the First Amendment. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985.

Neier, Aryeh. Defending My Enemy: American Nazis, the Skokie Case, and the Risks of Freedom. 1st ed. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1979.

Strum, Philippa. When the Nazis Came to Skokie: Freedom for Speech We Hate. [Lawrence, Kan.]: University Press of Kansas, 1999.

Schoe043 (talk) 18:52, 30 October 2018 (UTC) More Source

Delgado, Richard, and Jean Stefancic. Must We Defend Nazis?: Hate Speech, Pornography, and the New First Amendment. New York: NYU Press, 1997.

Hamlin, David. The Nazi/Skokie Conflict: A Civil Liberties Battle. Boston: Beacon Press, 1980. Schoe043 (talk) 14:51, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Parsing out the different lower court cases
Is it useful to walk through the different courts in which this case made its way through? If so, how much information? I'm seeing that in different cases, the plaintiff and defendant switch and the cases continue in 1978 since the Supreme Court ultimately remanded the stay. Schoe043 (talk) 09:02, 3 December 2018 (UTC)


 * I also wrote the following paragraph and was confused about as to where in the chronology these rulings take place. I include it below since they do have citations that may be helpful for someone who has a better knowledge of how the court system works:


 * After the Seventh Circuit Court ruled that Skokie's ordinances were unconstitutional, the Village of Skokie appealed to Justice John Paul Stevens of the United States Supreme Court. The village was already waiting for their appeal's appearance before the Court, but they were asking Justice Stevens for a stay of the NSPA's march. Decided on June 14, 1977, the Court denied Skokie's request, 7-2, with Justices Blackmun and White dissenting. The Court ordered the Illinois Appellate Court to review the injunction filed against the NSPA. Schoe043 (talk) 02:38, 8 December 2018 (UTC)


 * This source could also be useful in understanding the different cases that made it through the court system: Schoe043 (talk) 03:57, 10 December 2018 (UTC) Schoe043 (talk) 04:00, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Preceding lower court cases section
I added a new paragraph (the top one) to this section and it has some overlap with the existing paragraph for that section. I did not combine them because the pre-existing paragraph was very light on citations and will need to be fact-checked, but I wasn't sure how to go about that; it relates back to a question I have about the order in which the cases proceeded. I do not have enough knowledge to really understand how the court system works, so I simply left the paragraphs as they are now. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Schoe043 (talk • contribs) 02:57, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

"Landmark" decision?
I question the recent edit of the introductory paragraph to label NSPA v Skokie a "landmark" decision. That entire category is highly subjective, absolutely a matter of opinion, and I question it generally as a Wikipedia concept except perhaps for the handful of most impactful or doctrine-defining Supreme Court decisions. (That discussion, however, is to be pursued on a different page.) Even assuming the category is valid in general, the legal principles established by the Supreme Court's per curiam Skokie opinion are not comparable in importance to those of decisions generally considered "landmarks." Certainly the Skokie affair is important in the history of U.S. civil liberties and retains a place in popular lore concerning free speech battles (and the history of the ACLU). The court decision is likewise certainly important enough to warrant an article. But "landmark decision"? I think not. PDGPA (talk) 14:26, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

intro sucks
it is not written at the level of a general encylopedia; it is legal jargon (per curiam) It shoiuld start with a sentence aboout the broader issue, the right of Nazis to march thru a village full of holocaust survivors, and how this became a major cause celebfre and divisie issue for free speech advocates — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.245.17.105 (talk) 14:58, 27 July 2022 (UTC)