(Sept. 8) -- Terry Jones has a constitutional right to burn the Quran, and there is very little the law can do to stop him.

An uproar is growing as the Florida pastor moves forward with his plans to mark the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks by setting fire to copies of the Muslim holy book. But Jones' plan is protected by the First Amendment right to free speech, and experts say stopping the pastor would be difficult, if not impossible.

"It would be almost inconceivable to stop this, legally," Frederick Schauer, a law professor and First Amendment scholar at the University of Virginia, told AOL News today in a phone interview. "It's been pretty settled constitutional law for some time that burning the American flag, regardless of the consequences, is constitutionally protected. This is no different."

Some said the burning might be prevented on a technicality. Jones was denied a burn permit by the Gainesville Fire Department, but he has indicated he will go ahead anyway. In that event, the city could fine his Dove World Outreach Center, although it's not clear how large the fine would be.

"Burning a flag is constitutionally protected, but it doesn't mean you can burn a flag in a fire zone," said Eugene Volokh, a law professor at the University of California in Los Angeles.

But Volokh and other legal scholars say the Constitution protects free speech but remains indifferent to how offensive that speech may be. It also does not address the protests from public figures like Gen. David Petraeus, who has warned that burning the Quran may endanger U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"The statements by Gen. Petraeus and others are not grounds for stopping something like an anti-war protest or a protest at the proposed community center in ground zero," said Timothy Zick, a professor of law at William & Mary Law School, referring to the controversy surrounding the so-called "ground zero mosque" planned for lower Manhattan.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has publicly supported the proposed Islamic community center, agrees.

"We can't say that we're going to apply the First Amendment to only those cases where we are in agreement," Bloomberg told reporters Tuesday.

But David Goldberger, a law professor at Ohio State University, says the potential for violence might be grounds to block the event -- although he concedes it's not likely a court would accept that argument.

In 1977, Goldberger went before the Supreme Court and successfully defended the right of a Nazi group to march through Skokie, Ill., a small city with a significant Jewish population. He said that case was different than Jones' plan to burn the Quran.

"I never had the feeling in Skokie that people were going to die," Goldberger said of the planned Nazi march. "There's a feel here that's different, and I can't put my finger on it exactly, other than there's complete disregard for the safety of our fellow human beings."

Mohammad Mukhtar, a cleric running for a seat in the Afghan parliament, said the burning of the Quran would inspire attacks against Americans around the world.

"When [the] holy book Quran gets burned in public, then there is nothing left," he said, according to The Associated Press. "If this happens, I think the first and most important reaction will be that wherever Americans are seen, they will be killed. No matter where they will be in the world, they will be killed."

The problem, though, is that a legal injunction against the Quran burning, if granted, would do serious harm to the First Amendment. So Goldberger says a better solution would be to stop giving Jones so much attention.

"This bigot down in Florida had no idea that his action would have such international reverberation," the lawyer told AOL News today. "If he's like any of the clients I've had in the past, he's loving it."

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