Erwin Chemerinsky Quotes
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Fourth Amendment, which requires a judge-issued warrant for an arrest; the Fifth Amendment, which requires a grand jury indictment before a person is held for trial; and the Sixth Amendment, which says that a person can be imprisoned only after conviction by a jury based on proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
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Chief Justice Roberts has expressly said that the Constitution and the government should be colorblind, he sees no difference between government action that discriminates against minorities and one that benefits minorities.
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Campuses can never punish or censor the expression of ideas, however offensive, because otherwise they cannot perform their function of promoting inquiry, discovery, and the dissemination of new knowledge.
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The Board of Inquiry report fails to recognize that the central problem in the Los Angeles Police Department is the culture. The reality is there will not be meaningful reform in the Los Angeles Police Department until the culture is changed.
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Freedom of speech is essential to freedom of thought; it is essential to democratic self-governance; and the alternative-- government censorship and control of ideas-- has always led to disaster.
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For almost a century after the Slaughter-House Cases, the Court followed this narrow reading of the Equal Protection Clause and refused to use it to stop other types of discrimination. For example, in 1875, two years after the Slaughter-House Cases, the Supreme Court held that it was constitutional to deny women the right to vote.
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But the character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done. The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre, and causing a panic. . . . The question in every case is whether the words are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.
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It is often forgotten today that Plessy v. Ferguson was not an isolated Supreme Court decision. In case after case, the Court reaffirmed and upheld the ability of states to enforce apartheid.
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Words can cause real harm and interfere with a person's education. Campuses have a duty to act-- sometimes legally, always morally-- to protect their students from injury.
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In a society with a long history of discrimination, there should be a presumption that many laws with a discriminatory impact likely were motivated by a discriminatory purpose.