Edwards+v.+S.+Carolina

media type="custom" key="3546260"Edwards v. S. Carolina (Mr. Rieck) Jordan Dean and Bradyn Savage

This case is about ... 1. Dealt with first amendment rights 2. South Carolinas common law of crime of breach of the peace applied a peaceful march of racial discrimination. 3. Over 200 black high school and college kids took part in the march of racial discrimination. 4. The supreme courts votes were 8 with Edwards and 1 against. 5. There were 187 petitioners all which were black. 6. Decided on February 25, 1963 7. Also went with the due process of the fourteenth amendment. 8. Reversed the convictions of civil rights demonstrators. 9. While they were marching police just started arresting people for no reason. 10. The march was for unequal treatment and discrimination against blacks. They are trying to find if the officers wrongfully arrested some of the 200 people which in turn would violate their first and fourteenth amendment rights. In this case there were two amendments violated. The first and the fourteenth amendment were violated in this case. The due process clause in the fourteenth amendment was violated and in the first amendment it was violated because it does not permit a state to make criminal the peaceful expression of unpopular views. In this case there were two amendments violated. The first and the fourteenth amendment were violated in this case. The due process clause in the fourteenth amendment was violated and in the first amendment it was violated because it does not permit a state to make criminal the peaceful expression of unpopular views. Yes court ruled in peoples favor because it (WHAT) violated their first and fourteenth amendments rights. The Supreme Court declared that the students' convictions violated their rights of free speech, free assembly, and the freedom to petition government for redress of grievances. All of these rights, the Court said, were assured by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which makes fundamental guarantees of the Bill of Rights binding upon the states. The arbitrariness and egregiousness of South Carolina's violation of the petitioners' rights was manifest in the fact that they were not convicted of having violated any proper statute, only an ill-defined rule: We do not review in this case criminal convictions resulting from the evenhanded application of a precise and narrowly drawn regulatory statute evincing a legislative judgment that certain specific conduct be limited or proscribed. If, for example, the petitioners had been convicted upon evidence that they had violated a law regulating traffic, or had disobeyed a law reasonably limiting the periods during which the State House grounds were open to the public, this would be a different case. Yes. The Court held that the arrests and convictions violated the rights of the marchers. They were convicted of an offense which the South Carolina Supreme Court, in upholding the convictions, described as "not susceptible of exact definition." The evidence used to prosecute the marchers did not even remotely prove that their actions were violent. Hence, Justice Stewart found clear constitutional violations in this case. Stewart called the marchers' actions an exercise of First Amendment rights "in their most pristine and classic form" and emphasized that a state cannot "make criminal the peaceful expression of unpopular views" as South Carolina attempted to do here. Tom C Clark was the Descendent in this case he voted with it because The convictions of the petitioners, Negro high school and college students, for breach of the peace under South Carolina law are accepted by the Court "as binding upon us to that extent," but are held violative of "petitioners' constitutionally protected rights of free speech, free assembly, and freedom to petition for redress of their grievances." Petitioners, of course, had a right to peaceable assembly, to espouse their cause and to petition, but, in my view, the manner in which they exercised those rights was by no means the passive demonstration which this Court relates; rather, as the City Manager of Columbia testified, "a dangerous situation was really building up" which South Carolina's courts expressly found had created "an actual interference with traffic and an imminently threatened disturbance of the peace of the community." [|[n1]] Since the Court does not attack the state courts' findings, and accepts the convictions as "binding" to the extent that the petitioners' conduct constituted a breach of the peace, it is difficult for me to understand its understatement of the facts and reversal of the convictions. []

For more information, click on this link: [|Library of Congress Resources - Edwards v South Carolina]