Lawson v. Murray’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

7 federal appellate · 15 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 23 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “All speech-restricting injunctions are prior restraints in the literal sense of “ ‘administrative and judicial orders forbidding certain communications when issued in advance of the time that such communications are to occur.’ ” [Cit.] Precedent shows that a speech-restricting “injunction” that is not issued as a remedy for an adjudicated or impending violation of law is also a prior restraint in the condemnatory sense, that is, a prior restraint of the sort prohibited by the First Amendment____ The danger that speech-restricting injunctions may serve as a powerful means to suppress disfavored views is obvious enough even when they are based on a completed or impending violation of law. Once such a basis has been found, later speech may be quashed, or not quashed, in the discretion of a single official, who necessarily knows the content and viewpoint of the speech subject to the injunction; the injunction is enforceable through civil contempt, a summary process without the constitutional protection of a jury trial; and the only defense available to the enjoined party is factual compliance with the injunction, not unconstitutionality, ...”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Lucero v. Trosch