Lawson v. Murray

Last Term’s decision in Madsen v. Women’s Health Center, Inc., 512 U. S. 753 (1994), has damaged the First Amendment more quickly and more severely than I feared. In this case the New Jersey courts asserted the power to enjoin residential picketing *1111by antiabortion demonstrators that was explicitly found to have been peaceful and in violation of no state statute or rule of common law. It is one thing for the courts to enforce by injunction a general, content-neutral state law (civil or criminal) against all residential picketing, or to enjoin particular individuals from continuing residential…