Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568 (1942)
Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire is the foundational case articulating the 'fighting words' doctrine—one of the earliest and most frequently cited categorical exclusions from First Amendment protection.
Does the application of a state statute criminalizing offensive name-calling and epithets, as construed to cover only 'fighting words' likely to provoke an immediate breach of the peace, violate the First Amendment's Free Speech Clause as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment?
The First Amendment does not protect certain 'well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech,' including the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or 'fighting' words—those which, by their very utterance, inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. Because such speech is of slight social value and has no essential part in the exposition of ideas, states may, consistent with the Constitution, regulate or punish its use to protect public order, so long as the statute is appropriately limited in scope and reasonably applied.
No. The conviction was affirmed. As narrowed by the state court to reach only 'fighting words,' the New Hampshire statute does not violate the First Amendment, and Chaplinsky's face-to-face epithets to the city marshal constituted unprotected fighting words.
Chaplinsky established the fighting words doctrine and announced a categorical approach to unprotected speech that influenced mid-20th-century First Amendment jurisprudence. For students, it is pivotal both as a doctrinal anchor and as a benchmark against which later cases narrowed the doctrine: Cohen v. California protected offensive political slogans not directed as face-to-face insults; Gooding v. Wilson and Lewis v. New Orleans struck down overbroad 'abusive language' statutes; and R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul held that even within unprotected categories, the government cannot make content- or viewpoint-based distinctions. Modern courts rarely sustain fighting-words convictions, requiring direct, personal, face-to-face insults likely to provoke an immediate violent response, not merely offensive or profane speech.