Review the Capstone case Simon and Schuster, Inc. v. New York State Essay

Review the Capstone case Simon and Schuster, Inc. v. New York State Crime Victims Board on pages 412-417 of your textbook. Brief - Essay Example The Board then holds the money for satisfaction of all claims by the victims and creditors of the criminal or accused. The Court held that such a law smacks of First Amendment breach because of state imposition on content-based speech, which parallels the discriminatory tax law declared unconstitutional in Arkansas Writers’ Project Inc v Ragland 481 US 221. Two elements can be gleaned from the SC declaration of First Amendment inconsistency: the singling out of income from expressive activity, and; the singling out of â€Å"works with specified content.† This constitutional defect could have been overcome by compelling state interest, according to the SC, such as compensating victims of crimes or precluding criminals from profiting from their crimes. The disputed law, however, does not further state interest because there is no rationale in limiting its application to income derived from contents-based story of the criminal or accused. To allow the law entails placing i n its ambit a potentially large number of works such as the Confession of St. Augustine where he narrated stealing pears from his neighbor’s yard as an instance of moral weakness.