Heckler's veto

In the legal sense, a heckler's veto occurs when the speaker's right is curtailed or restricted by the government in order to prevent a reacting party's behavior.

In Gregory v. Chicago (1969), Justice Hugo Black, in a concurring opinion, argued that arresting demonstrators as a consequence of unruly behavior of by-standers would amount to a heckler's veto.

[5] For example, in Schenck v. Pro-Choice Network of Western New York (1997) it struck down a provision which would require anti-abortion protesters "either to stop talking or to get off the sidewalk whenever a patient came within 15 feet".

Note that, to a lawyer familiar with the First Amendment law, the phrase "heckler's veto" means something different from what the plain English interpretation of the words suggests.

'"[8] University of California, Irvine Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky invoked the concept in an editorial following a protest, in which students disrupted a speech by the Israeli ambassador Michael Oren.

[10] Michigan State University professor of political science William B. Allen has used the phrase "verbal terrorism" to refer to the same phenomenon, defining it as "calculated assault characterized by loud side-conversations, shouted interruptions, jabbered false facts, threats and personal insults".