Arthur Goldberg

“ Even assuming the applicability of a general clear and present danger test, it is one thing to conclude that the mere publication of a newspaper editorial or a telegram to a Secretary of Labor, however critical of a court, presents no clear and present danger to the administration of justice and quite another thing to conclude that crowds, such as this, demonstrating before a courthouse may not be prohibited by a legislative determination based on experience that such conduct inherently threatens the judicial process. ”

“ A State may protect against the possibility of a conclusion by the public under these circumstances that the judge's action was in part a product of intimidation and did not flow only from the fair and orderly working of the judicial process. ”

“ The fact that by their lights appellant and the 2,000 students were seeking justice and not its obstruction is as irrelevant as would be the motives of the mob condemned by Justice Holmes in Frank v. Mangum, supra. Louisiana, as we have pointed out supra, has the right to construe its statute to prevent parading and picketing from unduly influencing the administration of justice at any point or time in its process, regardless of whether the motives of the demonstrators are good or bad. ”

“ Louisiana surely has the right to infer the appropriate intent from circumstantial evidence. At the very least, a group of demonstrators parading and picketing before a courthouse where a criminal charge is pending, in protest against the arrest of those charged, may be presumed to intend to influence judges, jurors, witnesses or court officials. ”

“ There is an equally plain requirement for laws and regulations to be drawn so as to give citizens fair warning as to what is illegal; for regulation of conduct that involves freedom of speech and assembly not to be so broad in scope as to stifle First Amendment freedoms, which 'need breathing space to survive,' NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415, 433, 83 S.Ct. 328, 338, 9 L.Ed.2d 405; for appropriate limitations on the discretion of public officials where speech and assembly are intertwined with regulated conduct; and for all such laws and regulations to be applied with an equal hand. ”

“ Obviously telling demonstrators how far from the courthouse steps is 'near' the courthouse for purposes of a permissible peaceful demonstration is a far cry from allowing one to commit, for example, murder, or robbery. ”

“ As in Raley, under all the circumstances of this case, after the public officials acted as they did, to sustain appellant's later conviction for demonstrating where they told him he could 'would be to sanction an indefensible sort of entrapment by the State convicting a citizen for exercising a privilege which the State had clearly told him was available to him.' Id., at 426, 79 S.Ct., at 1260. The Due Process Clause does not permit convictions to be obtained under such circumstances. ”

“ There remains just one final point: the effect of the Sheriff's order to disperse. The State in effect argues that this order somehow removed the prior grant of permission and reliance on the officials' construction that the demonstration on the far side of the street was not illegal as being 'near' the courthouse. This, however, we cannot accept. Appellant was led to believe that his demonstration on the far side of the street violated no statute. ”

“ Florida, 328 U.S. 331, 66 S.Ct. 1029, 90 L.Ed. 1295, do not hold to the contrary. Both these cases dealt with the power of a judge to sentence for contempt persons who published or caused to be published writings commenting on judicial proceedings. ”

“ In addition, even if we were to accept the State's version that the sole reason for terminating the demonstration was that appellant exceeded the narrow time limits [6] set by the police, his conviction could not be sustained. Assuming the place of the meeting was appropriate-as appellant justifiably concluded from the official grant of permission-nothing in this courthouse statute, nor in the breach of the peace or obstruction of public passages statutes with their broad sweep and application that we have condemned in No. ”