Beauharnais v. Illinois

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Beauharnais v. Illinois
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued November 28, 1951 Decided April 28, 1952
Full case name: Beauharnais v. Illinois Citations: 343 U.S. 250; 72 S. Ct. 725; 96 L. Ed. 919; 1952 U.S. LEXIS 2799 Prior history: Cert. to the S.Ct. of IL. The Supreme Court of Illinois sustained petitioner's conviction of a violation of Ill. Rev. Stat., 1949, c. 38 § 471, over his objection that the statute was invalid under the Fourteenth Amendment. 408 Ill. 512, 97 N. E. 2d 343. This Court granted certiorari. 342 U.S. 809. Affirmed, p. 267
Holding
The Court upheld an Illinois law making it illegal to publish or exhibit any writing or picture portraying the "depravity, criminality, unchasity, or lack of virtue of a class of citizens of any race, color, creed or religion."
Court membership
Chief Justice: Fred M. Vinson Associate Justices: Hugo Black, Stanley Forman Reed, Felix Frankfurter, William O. Douglas, Robert H. Jackson, Harold Hitz Burton, Tom C. Clark, Sherman Minton
Case opinions
Majority by: Frankfurter Joined by: Vinson, Burton, Clark, Minton Dissent by: Black Joined by: Douglas Dissent by: Reed Joined by: Douglas Dissent by: Douglas Dissent by: Jackson
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amends. I, XIV

Beauharnais v. Illinois, 343 U.S. 250 (1952), was a case that came before the Supreme Court in 1952. The result was that an Illinois law making it illegal to publish or exhibit any writing or picture portraying the "depravity, criminality, unchasity, or lack of virtue of a class of citizens of any race, color, creed or religion" was upheld.

The leaflet that started it [1] (pdf).