"Imminent lawless action" is one of several legal standards American courts use to determine whether certain speech is protected under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
[1][2] Brandenburg clarified what constituted a "clear and present danger", the standard established by Schenck v. United States (1919), and overruled Whitney v. California (1927), which had held that speech that merely advocated violence could be made illegal.
While the precise meaning of "imminent" may be ambiguous in some cases, the court provided later clarification in Hess v. Indiana (1973) in which the court found that Hess's words were protected under "his rights to free speech",[3] in part, because his speech "amounted to nothing more than advocacy of illegal action at some indefinite future time,"[3] and therefore did not meet the imminence requirement.
These later decisions have fashioned the principle that the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.
[4] This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the United States Government.