California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from Younger v. Smith, 106 Cal.Rptr. 225, 30 Cal.App.3d 138 (Cal. App. 1973):
If any single case of the past can be said to have embraced the 'clear and present danger' test, it was Bridges v. California, 314 U.S. 252, 62 S.Ct. 190, 86 L.Ed. 192, where it was lauded as affording 'practical guidance in a great variety of cases' involving the scope of freedom of expression. (Id., p. 262, 62 S.Ct., p. 193.) It was also characterized as a 'working principle that the substantive evil must be extremely serious and the degree of imminence extremely high' before speech can be punished. (Id., p. 263, 62 S.Ct., p. 194.) Presumably then, if the test is not 'practical' and is inherently incapable of 'working,' [30 Cal.App.3d 163] but the court nevertheless is under a constitutional duty to curb speech to combat the evil of an unfair trial, the test is irrelevant. Some other yardstick will have to be found.
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