Gooding v. Wilson/Dissent Burger

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE BURGER, dissenting.

I fully join in MR. JUSTICE BLACKMUN's dissent against the bizarre result reached by the Court. It is not merely odd, it is nothing less than remarkable that a court can [p529] find a state statute void on its face, not because of its language—which is a traditional test—but because of the way courts of that State have applied the statute in a few isolated cases, decided as long ago as 1905 and generally long before this Court's decision in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568 (1942). Even if all of those cases had been decided yesterday, they do nothing to demonstrate that the narrow language of the Georgia statute has any significant potential for sweeping application to suppress or deter important protected speech.

In part the Court's decision appears to stem from its assumption that a statute should be regarded in the same light as its most vague clause, without regard to any of its other language. Thus, since the statute contains the words "tending to cause a breach of the peace" the Court finds its result "compelled" by such decisions as Ashton v. Kentucky, 384 U.S. 195 (1966), and Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 536 (1965). The statute at bar, however, does not prohibit language "tending to cause a breach of the peace." Nor does it prohibit the use of "opprobrious words of abusive language" without more. Rather, it prohibits use "to or of another, and in his presence [of] opprobrious words or abusive language, tending to cause a breach of the peace." If words are to bear their common meaning, and are to be considered in context, rather than dissected with surgical precision using a semantic scalpel, this statute has little potential for application outside the realm of "fighting words" that this Court held beyond the protection of the First Amendment in Chaplinsky. Indeed, the language used by the Chaplinsky Court to describe words properly subject to regulation bears a striking resemblance to that of the Georgia statute, which was enacted many, many years before Chaplinsky was decided. See 315 U.S., at 573. And if the early Georgia cases cited by the majority establish any proposition, it is that the statute, as its language so clearly indicates, is aimed at [p530] preventing precisely that type of personal, face-to-face, abusive and insulting language likely to provoke a violent retaliation—self-help, as we euphemistically call it—that the Chaplinsky case recognized would be validly prohibited. The facts of the case now before the Court demonstrate that the Georgia statute is serving that valid and entirely proper purpose. There is no persuasive reason to wipe the statute from the books, unless we want to encourage victims of such verbal assaults to seek their own private redress.

The Court apparently acknowledges that the conduct of the defendant in this case is not protected by the First Amendment, and does not contend that the Georgia statute is so ambiguous that he did not have fair notice that his conduct was prohibited. Nor does the Court deny that under normal principles of constitutional adjudication, appellee would not be permitted to attack his own conviction on the ground that the statute in question might in some hypothetical situation be unconstitutionally applied to the conduct of some party not before the Court. United States v. Raines, 362 U.S. 17, 21 (1960) (BRENNAN, J.). Instead, the Court relies on certain sweeping language contained in a few opinions for the preposition that, without regard to the nature of appellee's conduct, the statute in question must be invalidated on its face unless "it is not susceptible of application to speech,... that is protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments."

Such an expansive statement of the technique of invalidating state statutes on their face because of their substantial overbreadth finds little in policy or the actual circumstances of the Court's past decisions to commend it. As the Court itself recognizes, if the First Amendment overbreadth doctrine serves any legitimate purpose, it is to allow the Court to invalidate statutes because their language demonstrates their potential for [p531] sweeping improper applications posing a significant likelihood of deterring important First Amendment speech—not because of some insubstantial or imagined potential for occasioned and isolated applications that go beyond constitutional bounds. Writing in a related context, Mr. Justice Black, only last Term, evidenced proper regard for normal principles of adjudication when he observed: "'Procedures for testing the constitutionality of a statute 'on its face'... and for then enjoining all action to enforce the statute until the State can obtain court approval for a modified version, are fundamentally at odds with the function of the federal courts in our constitutional plan. The power and duty of the judiciary to declare laws unconstitutional is in the final analysis derived from its responsibility for resolving concrete disputes brought before the courts for decision; a statute apparently governing a dispute cannot be applied by judges... when such an application of the statute would conflict with the Constitution. Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137 (1803). But this vital responsibility, broad as it is, does not amount to an unlimited power to survey the statute books and pass judgment on laws before the courts are called upon to enforce them.... [T]he task of analyzing a proposed statute, pinpointing its deficiencies, and requiring correction of these deficiencies before the statute is put into effect, is rarely if ever an appropriate task for the judiciary....' Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37, 52-53 (1971)." These observations were directed specifically to the practice of issuing federal court injunctions against state prosecutions, but the problem presented by this case is much the same.

[p532] Consistent with this properly restrained approach, the overbreadth decisions of this Court, including most of those relied on by the majority, have up to now invalidated state statutes on their face only when their potential for sweeping and improper application in important areas of First Amendment concern was far more apparent—both from the language of the statute and the subject matter of its coverage—than in this case. Indeed, in many of the Court's leading cases, the statute's improper sweep and deterrent potential were amply documented by the very facts of the case before the Court. Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 536 (1965), heavily relied on by the majority, for example, involved a "breach of the peace" conviction of a leader of black students on the basis of his participation in a peaceful demonstration protesting racial discrimination and a speech urging a "sit in" at segregated lunch counters. Although the Court held, in the alternative, that a statutory prohibition against congregating with others on a public sidewalk "with intent to provoke a breach of the peace, or under circumstances such that a breach of the peace may be occasioned thereby" was unconstitutionally vague and overbroad, it is clear that its primary holding was that the statute had been unconstitutionally applied to appellant's conduct as revealed by the record before the Court. See 379 U.S., at 545-551. In contrast to today's opinion, which mentions the facts of the instant case only by way of passing in a footnote, the Cox opinion contained a careful recital and examination of the facts involved, and took care to observe that there was not in the record "any evidence... of 'fighting words.' See Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568," 379 U.S., at 551. It was clear, therefore, that in Cox not only the language of the statute, but the facts of the very case before the Court, involving as it did protected political speech concerning a burning issue of great social concern, were cogent and persuasive evidence of the [p533] statute's potential for sweeping and improper applications. By way of contrast, there is nothing in the language of the Georgia statute, or even in the isolated and ancient Georgia decisions relied on by the Court today that indicates that the statute involved in this case has ever been applied to suppress speech even remotely comparable to that involved in Cox.

There is no need to consider each of the other decisions relied on by the majority to reach its result in detail. Suffice it to say that such cases as Ashton v. Kentucky, 384 U.S. 195 (1966); Baggett v. Bullitt, 377 U.S. 360 (1964); NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415 (1963), and Dombrowski v. Pfister, 380 U.S. 479 (1965), arose out of factual situations and involved statutory language and objectives so far different from the instant case in terms of the actual and apparent danger to free expression that their relevance to the case at hand is at best strained and remote.

[p534] The Court makes a mechanical and, I suggest, insensitive application of the overbreadth doctrine today. As MR. JUSTICE BLACKMUN correctly points out, it is difficult to imagine how a State could enact a statute more clearly and narrowly aimed at regulating the type of conduct that the unanimous holding of Chaplinsky tells us may be regulated. It is regrettable that one consequence of this holding may be to mislead some citizens to believe that fighting words of this kind may be uttered free of any legal sanctions.