What Is a True Threat on Facebook?

[Commentary] The First Amendment protects all kinds of outrageous and upsetting speech. As the Supreme Court has stated in a long line of cases, the government cannot punish violent words -- even “vehement, caustic” or “unpleasantly sharp attacks” -- unless they are “true threats.” The problem is identifying what, exactly, counts as a true threat.

The Justices took up this issue in the context of the Internet, where every day millions of words -- of varying degrees of seriousness and violence -- rocket around the world. Threats can terrify people and disrupt lives, but in a country devoted to broad speech protections, it is not too much to require the government to prove that a speaker intended to make a threat before it can put him behind bars.