Coming in late on this: I've gone back and forth over the years about what to do about Cohen, although now I've settled in on using the word (on the ground that -- at least with my students -- the chances of offense are quite low). (I take it that the possibility of giving offense is relevant to the pedagogic questions Sandy raises even if one thinks that the government cannot ban or regulate material simply on the ground of its offensiveness.) There's a similar problem in teaching Hess v. Indiana, which I think is a nice case to illustrate precisely what Brandenburg means by imminence.
On a related topic, and along the lines of Sandy's interest in anecdotes: Obscenity/pornography is pretty clearly much more difficult than Cohen, I think. I've never displayed any materials in class. What I sometimes do is describe what Potter Stewart meant by hard-core pornography (and what is clearly prohibitable -- subject to community standards -- under Miller). The description is that Stewart meant depictions of penetration and ejaculation -- depictions, I point out, that are readily available on the Web at free sites that an untutored person can locate in about ten minutes (I used to report how long it took for me to find free Stewart-hard-core obscenity on the Web [usually, about ten minutes] but now I've pretty much memorized the easiest site's address [available on request] so I can't do that any more). Given the ready available of hard-core obscenity (in Stewart's and Miller's sense), pretty clearly the only thing worth talking about with respect to obscenity is the transformation in community standards in many places. (Interestingly, Penthouse magazine regularly carries photographs of penetration, but -- perhaps because of advice from its lawyers -- only in black-and-white photospreads, unlike the color photospreads in the rest of the magazine.) But, what remains interesting to talk about, I think, is non-obscene (in the Miller sense) sexually explicit material that offends/subordinates. And, to the extent that the concern is offense (or subordination that is itself offensive), there really is a pedagogic problem, which I've never been able to solve.
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