Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project
a case decided by the Supreme Court, June 24, 2010
On June 21, in one of its last decisions of the term, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment permits Congress to imprison human rights activists merely for advising militant organizations on ways to reject violence and pursue their disputes through lawful means. The Court’s decision is all the more disturbing when contrasted with its ruling in the Citizens United case earlier this year. In the Roberts Court’s world, corporations’ freedom to spend unlimited sums of money apparently deserves substantially greater protection than the freedom of human rights advocates to speak.
