Cite as: 532 U. S. 223 (2001)
Opinion of the Court
an alteration of the Turner analysis that would entail additional federal-court oversight.
Finally, even if we were to consider giving special protection to particular kinds of speech based upon content, we would not do so for speech that includes legal advice.3 Augmenting First Amendment protection for inmate legal advice would undermine prison officials' ability to address the "complex and intractable" problems of prison administration. Turner, supra, at 84. Although supervised inmate legal assistance programs may serve valuable ends, it is "indisputable" that inmate law clerks "are sometimes a menace to prison discipline" and that prisoners have an "acknowledged propensity . . . to abuse both the giving and the seeking of [legal] assistance." Johnson v. Avery, 393 U. S. 483, 488, 490 (1969). Prisoners have used legal correspondence as a means for passing contraband and communicating instructions on how to manufacture drugs or weapons. See Brief for State of Florida et al. as Amici Curiae 6-8; see also Turner, supra, at 93 ("[P]risoners could easily write in jargon or codes to prevent detection of their real messages"). The legal text also could be an excuse for making clearly inappropriate comments, which "may be expected to circulate among prisoners," Thornburgh v. Abbott, 490 U. S. 401, 412 (1989), despite prison measures to screen individual inmates or officers from the remarks.
We thus decline to cloak the provision of legal assistance with any First Amendment protection above and beyond the protection normally accorded prisoners' speech. In-3 Murphy suggests that the right to provide legal advice follows from a right to receive legal advice. However, even if one right followed from the other, Murphy is incorrect in his assumption that there is a free-standing right to receive legal advice. Under our right-of-access precedents, inmates have a right to receive legal advice from other inmates only when it is a necessary "means for ensuring a 'reasonably adequate opportunity to present claimed violations of fundamental constitutional rights to the courts.' " Lewis v. Casey, 518 U. S. 343, 350-351 (1996) (quoting Bounds v. Smith, 430 U. S. 817, 825 (1977)).
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