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10 involving only political hyperbole. See Rogers v. United States, 422 U. S. 35 (1975). The Court in Rogers reversed the conviction on other grounds, but Justice Marshall focused on the danger of deterring non-threatening speech. An objective standard, turning only on how reasonable observers would construe a statement in context, would make people give threats “a wide berth.” Id., at 47 (concurring opinion). And so use of that standard would discourage the “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open debate that the First Amendment is intended to protect.” Id., at 48 (quoting Sullivan, 376 U. S., at 270).

The reasoning—and indeed some of the words—came straight from this Court’s decisions insisting on a subjective element in other unprotected-speech cases, whether involving defamation, incitement, or obscenity. No doubt, the approach in all of those cases has a cost: Even as it lessens chill of protected speech, it makes prosecution of otherwise proscribable, and often dangerous, communications harder. And the balance between those two effects may play out differently in different contexts, as the next part of this opinion discusses. But the ban on an objective standard remains the same, lest true-threats prosecutions chill too much protected, non-threatening expression.

The next question concerns the type of subjective standard the First Amendment requires. The law of mens rea offers three basic choices. Purpose is the most culpable level in the standard mental-state hierarchy, and the hardest to prove. A person acts purposefully when he “consciously desires” a result—so here, when he wants his words to be received as threats. United States v. Bailey, 444 U. S. 394, 404 (1980). Next down, though not often distinguished from purpose, is knowledge. Ibid. A person acts knowingly when “he is aware that [a] result is practically certain to follow”—so here, when he knows to a practical