Dr. Erik Nielson among scholars filing 'amici' brief on behalf of petitioner in Supreme Court case

Dr. Erik Nielson, assistant professor and coordinator of liberal arts, who has co-authored an “Amici Curiae Brief of the Marion B. Brechner First Amendment Project and Rap Music Scholars (Professors Erik Nielson and Charis E. Kubrin) in support of Petitioner Anthony Douglas Elonis” filed with the United States Supreme Court, August 18, 2014.

The brief relies on scholarship by Nielson and Kubrin along with the Marion B. Brechner First Amendment Project to support a reversal of a U.S. Court of Appeals decision in the case of United States v. Elonis. The concluding summary of the brief appears below.

The history and conventions of rap music, the heavily stigmatized artistic and often political genre of musical expression through which Petitioner Anthony Douglas Elonis conveyed much of the speech at issue in this case, illustrate why the Court should: a) require proof of the defendant-speaker’s subjective intent to threaten under both the First Amendment-based true threats doctrine and 18 U.S.C. § 875(c); and b) reverse the decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in United States v. Elonis, 730 F.3d 321 (3d Cir. 2013).