The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear U.S. v. Hansen, a case having to do with when speech encouraging civilly prohibited but not criminal conduct (there, remaining in the U.S. without proper immigration authorization) can be criminally punished. I think the answer should be that the solicitation exception to the First Amendment allows (1) the criminal punishment of solicitation of criminal conduct, but (2) only civil liability for solicitation of merely civilly actionable conduct. I had filed a brief on this and other matters in U.S. v. Sineneng-Smith, and this particular question was discussed during oral argument; so I thought I'd file such a brief here in Hansen, focusing on this question. (I plan on sending it to the printer Tuesday morning.)
Because the brief is on my own behalf, my only interest is in getting things right, not in serving a particular client. I therefore thought I'd post it here, and ask for any suggestions for how it can be improved or corrected; please post them in the comments, or e-mail me at volokh at law.ucla.edu. Thanks!
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