
Walker v. Sons of Confederate Veterans
A teaching assistant from Yale's America's Unwritten Constitution course, taught by Akhil Reed Amar, works through Walker v. Sons of Confederate Veterans, the Supreme Court case over Texas's refusal to issue a Confederate flag specialty license plate. The lesson lays out the two legal questions at stake: whether a license plate counts as government speech or private speech, and whether Texas's rejection amounted to viewpoint discrimination if the speech is private. The TA contrasts the plate with a public monument, walks through both Texas's and the Sons of Confederate Veterans' arguments, and points out an apparent inconsistency in the state's position. Chapters move from the facts of the case through incorporation doctrine, the government speech doctrine, and the viewpoint discrimination test. It closes with open questions for viewers to weigh rather than a final verdict, in keeping with its role as a short bonus lesson within the larger constitutional law course.