Beauharnais v. Illinois

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Beauharnais v. Illinois

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.

In his opinion Justice Frankfurter argued that the speech conducted by the defendant breached libel, which is reasoned to be outside the protection of the 1st and 14th Amendments.