WASHINGTON — In a major First Amendment ruling, the Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down a federal law that made it a crime to create or sell dogfight videos and other depictions of animal cruelty. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority in the 8-to-1 decision, said that the law had created ‘a criminal prohibition of alarming breadth and that the government’s aggressive defense of the law was ‘startling and dangerous. The decision left open the possibility that Congress could enact a narrower law that would pass constitutional muster. But the existing law, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, covered too much speech protected by the First Amendment. It has been more than a quarter-century since the Supreme Court placed a category of speech outside the protection of the First Amendment. Tuesday’s resounding and lopsided rejection of a request that it do so, along with its decision in Citizens United in January - concluding that corporations may spend freely in candidate elections - suggest that the Roberts Court is prepared to adopt a robustly libertarian view of the constitutional protection of free speech. And in the next couple of months, the court is set to […]