Historic Supreme Court decisions: free expression on the internet and protection for consensual sex
Today marks the anniversary of two important US Supreme Court decisions. Reno v. ACLU (announced on June 26, 1997) is close to our heart, as it was the first major Supreme Court ruling regarding the regulation of materials distributed via the Internet. The case involved the Communications Decency Act, passed by Congress in an attempt to protect minors from explicit internet material by criminalizing the intentional transmission of certain messages and images. The Court ruled that the Act violated the First Amendment because its regulations amounted to a content-based blanket restriction of free speech.
In Lawrence v. Texas (announced five years ago today), the Supreme Court struck down a Texas consensual-sodomy law in a
prosecution involving two men who were having sex in a private home. The Court ruled that intimate consensual sexual conduct was part of the liberty protected by substantive due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. Lawrence has had the effect of invalidating similar laws throughout the United States that purport to criminalize homosexual activity between consenting adults acting in private.
If one man can be allowed to determine for himself what is law, every man can. That means first chaos, then tyranny. Legal process is an essential part of the democratic process.
When suspects are arrested or detained, they must be informed of their constitutional right against self-incrimination and the right to an attorney. If they are not told of their rights, any information gathered by police during an interrogation is inadmissible in a court of law. See, e.g. 
The law is equal before all of us; but we are not all equal before the law. Virtually there is one law for the rich and another for the poor, one law for the cunning and another for the simple, one law for the forceful and another for the feeble, one law for the ignorant and another for the learned, one law for the brave and another for the timid, and within family limits one law for the parent and no law at all for the child.
Eight years ago on June 19th, the US Supreme Court announced a landmark decision on one of the most controversial topics in American jurisprudence: school prayer. In 
A person has “color of title” to a piece of property when, for one reason or another, the document evidencing title (a deed, for example) is invalid.
The LII has agreed to partner with 
The law is only one of several imperfect and more or less external ways of defending what is better in life against what is worse. By itself, the law can never create anything better…. Establishing respect for the law does not automatically ensure a better life for that, after all, is a job for people and not for laws and institutions.
Fifteen years ago this month LII’s director and co-founder Tom Bruce released the first web browser for Windows. June 8, 1993 is the anniversary of the 0.1 release, with a succession of follow-up releases soon after: Cello 0.2 on June 14th, 0.3 on June 16th, 0.4 on June 18th, 0.5 on June 24th, and 0.6 on June 30th. For good or ill, the web browser didn’t catch on — though it did incorporate some features that have only recently been incorporated into mainstream browsers, and it went on to live a brief existence as the underpinning of a couple of commercial products.
‘Send back’, usually in the context of 