On Friday morning, the country, still reeling from the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, woke up to a lot of unanswered questions. Why, after a night of peaceful demonstrations in one of the nation's largest, most diverse cities — so peaceful that protesters offered to buy coffee for officers, and police reminded the protesters to stay hydrated — did a sniper unexpectedly open fire, killing five officers and injuring seven others, along with two civilians? Aside from the horror for the people gathered in Dallas, what could it mean for other protests gearing up across America? Could it be used to justify a degrading of our First Amendment rights? What stops the government from canceling subsequent protests if it feels its own officers are at risk?

Rolling Stone recently spoke with Geoffrey Stone, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School and a constitutional expert, to ask if our fears were founded.

Could an attack like this, targeting the police who were there to protect protesters, mean no more protests for a while?
No, no, no. There's a very strong principle in First Amendment jurisprudence, called the heckler's veto, which is critical. A classic example would be Skokie [in Illinois, in 1977]. The Nazis wanted to march in Skokie, and there were people who said, "We're gonna have to kill them." What the courts have figured out, and have adhered to in a very strong way, is that we cannot allow people who threaten violence to effectively conscript the government to prohibit the speech because they're afraid of the violence. Because if you did that, then you just encourage people to engage in violence, or threaten violence, even though they're never going to actually do it.

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