What was going on in the United States when the Texas v. Johnson case came to the US Supreme Court?

Answer 1

Texas v. Johnson arrived in the US Supreme Court during its 1988-1989 Term, an era that saw an end to the Cold War with the former Soviet Union and the collapse of the Berlin wall. These incidents were important historically, but ancillary to the Texas v. Johnson case, which arose from a political protest in 1984.

1984 was a Presidential election year. Gregory Johnson participated in a protest against Reagan's foreign and military policies, as well as military participation of certain Dallas-based defense contractors, during the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas.

The Reagan years represented a major change in American foreign and domestic policy, with the country moving away from President Johnson's Great Society domestic social programs (which endured through the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations) toward moral conservatism and economic policies favoring the wealthy.

The US entered a deep recession in 1981-1982, during Reagan's first term of office. The unemployment rate reached approximately 11% in 1982, while interest rates soared to nearly 20%. In order to end the recession, Reagan implemented new economic policies (known variously as supply-side economics, trickle-down economics, "Reaganomics," or "voodoo economics," depending on the speaker's perspective) that favored deregulation of industry and tax cuts for the wealthy and large businesses, combined with radical cuts in the size and scope of federal social programs. Reagan increased funding to the military at the rate of about 10% per year (much of the money went toward overpaying corrupt defense supply contractors), and declined to reign in Social Security spending, fearing loss of support from older voters.

These economic policies resulted in deficit spending and a huge increase in the national debt, but also stimulated the economy without significantly increasing inflation. The United States entered a temporary period of prosperity that boosted Reagan's popularity among voters. Many progressives were disenchanted with the Reagan administration domestic and foreign policies, however.

Internationally, the United States continued to engage in a Cold War struggle with the former Soviet Union, renewing the arms race in part as a result of the Soviets' courtship of Cuba, an island off the coast of Florida that could offer the USSR a strategic military position against the United States.

Reagan's interest in increasing the United States' military strength lead to deteriorating relations with other superpowers and a US policy of non-cooperation with the United Nations, culminating in the United States' withdrawal from UNESCO in 1984.

Militarily, the United States was involved in skirmishes in the Middle East, Libya, Grenada, Cambodia, Mozambique, and Angola. The nation supported the Afghani Mujahideen in their battle with the Soviets, supplied funds and weapons to Central American Contra fighters in Nicaragua, and sold military weapons to Iran in exchange for the release of hostages (a scandal that became known as the Iran-Contra Affair). The US also supported corrupt governments in El Salvador, Honduras, Guatamala and the Philippines (President Marcos), and reversed the Carter administration condemnation of the Argentine Junta for human rights abuses.

These military policies were the focus of the protests outside the RNC headquarters during its Dallas convention, and the reason Gregory Johnson, the respondent/defendant in Texas v. Johnson, burned an American flag in protest.

Case Citation:

Texas v. Johnson, 491 US 397 (1989)

For more information about Texas v. Johnson, see Related Questions, below.