Abstract
In what became perhaps the most oft-quoted sentence in the First Amendment jurisprudence of the United States, Justice Stevens observed that “few of us would march our sons and daughters off to war to preserve the citizen’s right to see ‘Specified Sexual Activities’ exhibited in the theaters of our choice”.1 Much less celebrated is a reply by Archibald Cox:
Few of us would march our sons or daughters off to war to preserve the citizen’s right to see pictures of American Nazis marching in uniform in Skokie, Illinois, or to hear advocacy of Stalinist Communism, or to read advertisements stating the price of prescription drugs. The test is both unreasoning and insufficient.2
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References
Young v. American Mini Theatres, Inc., 427 U.S. 50, 70 (1976).
Archibald Cox, “The Supreme Court, 1979 Term — Foreword: Freedom of Expression in Burger Court”, Harvard Law Review 94 (1980): 1–73, p. 29.
FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726, 745 (1978).
Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616, 630 (1919) (Holmes J, dissenting), emphases added.
Consolidated Edison Co. v. Public Serv. Comm’n., 447 U.S. 530, 540 (1980).
Thomas v. Review Bd., 450 U.S. 707, 718 (1981). The formula quoted in the text concerned the Free Exercise of Religion Clause.
R. v. Oakes, [1986] 1 S.C.R. 103, 138–39.
R. v. Keegstra, (1991) 61 C.C.C. 3d 1, 55.
Frederick Schauer, “The Aim and the Target in Free Speech Methodology”, Northwestern Law Review 83 (1989): 562–68, p. 563.
315 U.S. 568 (1942).
See Laurence H. Tribe, American Constitutional Law (Mineola, N.Y.: The Foundation Press, 1988, 2nd ed.), pp. 850–56.
315 U.S. at 571–72.
See Geoffrey R. Stone, “Content Regulation and the First Amendment”, William and Mary Law Review 15 (1983): 189–252, pp. 194–195.
Cox, p. 28. See also, similarly, Larry Alexander, “Low Value Speech”, Northwestern University Law Review 83 (1989): 547–54
Kenneth L. Karst, “Equality as a Central Principle in the First Amendment”, University of Chicago Law Review 43 (1975): 20–68, p. 28; Tribe, pp. 940–44.
Cass R. Sunstein, Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech (New York: Free Press, 1993), p. 124.
495 U.S. 103(1990).
Note, “The Supreme Court, Leading Cases”, Harvard Law Review 104 (1990): 129–358, p. 245.
Id., footnote omitted.
Id., emphasis added.
Alexander, p. 554.
Sunstein, p. 126, footnote omitted, emphasis added.
Thomas I. Emerson, “Toward a General Theory of the First Amendment”, Yale Law Journal 72 (1963): 877–956, p. 917.
See also Thomas I. Emerson, The System of Freedom of Expression (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 17.
Teamsters Local 695 v. Vogt, 354 U.S. 284, 289 (1957). The decision concerned trade union picketing. See also, similarly, Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 559 (1965) where a statute prohibiting picketing near a courthouse was upheld as a valid regulation of conduct as distinguished from pure speech.
See Tribe, p. 827.
354 U.S. at 296 (Douglas, J., dissenting), emphasis added.
Spence v. Washington, 418 U.S. 405, 410–11 (1974).
Id. at 409.
Miller v. City of South Bend, 904 F.2d 1081 (7th Cir. 1990).
Id. at 1087.
South Florida Free Beaches, Inc. v. City of Miami, 734 F.2d 608, 609–610 (11th Cir. 1984).
Jarman v. Williams, 753 F.2d 76, 78 (8th Cir. 1985)
Sunset Amusement Co. v. Board of Police Comrs. of City of Los Angeles, 7 Cal.3d 64, 74, 496 P.2d 840, 845–846
Frederick Schauer, Free Speech: A Philosophical Enquiry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 98.
Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15, 26 (1971).
Id. at 27 (Blackmun, J., dissenting).
R. George Wright, “A Rationale from J. S. Mill for the Free Speech Clause”, Supreme Court Review (1985): 149–178, p. 173.
Id. p. 173.
John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty”, in On Liberty and Other Writings, ed. by Stefan Collini (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 54.
Id.
Edward Shils, “The Virtue of Civil Society”, Government and Opposition 8 (1981): 3–20, p. 12.
Id., p. 13
Mill, p. 54.
Sunstein, p. 181.
Id.
Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397, 430 (1989) (Rehnquist, C.J., dissenting).
United States v. O’Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 377, 381 (1968).
491 U.S. at 409, reference omitted, quoting FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726, 745 (1978).
391 U.S. at 377.
Id. at 382.
Id. at 377, emphasis added.
For a classical exposition of this approach, see John Hart Ely, “Flag Desecration: A Case Study in the Roles of Categorization and Balancing in First Amendment Analysis”, Harvard Law Review 88 (1975): 1482–1508.
Frederick Schauer, “Categories and the First Amendment: A Play in Three Acts”, Vanderbilt Law Review 34 (1981): 265–307, pp. 270–71.
See id., p. 268.
Frederick Schauer, “The Speech of Law and the Law of Speech”, Arkansas Law Review 49 (1997): 687–701, p. 692, footnote omitted.
Schauer, “Categories and the First Amendment”, p. 271.
See Wojciech Sadurski, Moral Pluralism and Legal Neutrality (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990), pp. 171–80.
Schauer, Free Speech, pp. 101–2.
Stone, p. 230.
The words in quotation marks are from American Booksellers Association v. Hudnut, 771 F.2d 323, 325, 332 (7th Cir. 1985), a decision of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit which invalidated an Indianapolis anti-pornography ordinance.
David A.J. Richards, Toleration and the Constitution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 193.
Stone, p. 227, emphasis added, footnote omitted.
Steven H. Shiffrin, The First Amendment, Democracy, and Romance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 18, footnote omitted.
Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, 433 U.S. 350, 383 (1977).
Id. at 383, footnote omitted.
Posadas de Puerto Rico Assoc. v. Tourism Co., 478 U.S. 328 (1986).
Id. at 343.
Id. at 344, emphasis added.
R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377, 380 (1992).
Steven H. Shiffrin, “Racist Speech, Outsider Jurisprudence, and the Meaning of America”, Cornell Law Review 80 (1995): 101–66, p. 119.
505 U.S. at 392–93.
See Stephen W. Gard, “Fighting Words as Free Speech”, Washington University Law Quarterly 58 (1980): 531–81, p. 580; for more on fighting words, see Chapter 3.3.
505 U.S. at 391–92.
This point was made by Justice Stevens in R.A.V., 505 U.S. at 435 (Stevens, J., concurring in the judgment).
Id. at 391, references omitted, emphasis added.
Id. at 429 (Stevens, J., concurring in the judgment).
John Paul Stevens, “The Freedom of Speech”, Yale Law Journal 102 (1993): 1293–1313, p. 1309.
505 U.S. at 383.
Id. at 384.
Id. at 388.
Kent Greenawalt, Fighting Words (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 57–58.
Shifïrin, “Racist Speech”, p. 118.
505 U.S. at 388.
Id. at 388, reference omitted.
Id. at 407–09 (White, J., concurring in the judgment); at 415–16 (Blackmun, J., concurring in the judgment).
For a good discussion of various aspects of relations between viewpoint regulation and harm-based regulation, see Shiffrin, The First Amendment, Democracy, and Romance, pp. 17–23.
Tribe, p. 925.
Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 572 (1942).
See New York v. Ferber, 458 U.S. 747 (1981).
On “perlocutions” see John R. Searle, Speech Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969) pp. 25, 45–47.
See, e.g., Martin H. Redish, “Tobacco Advertising and the First Amendment”, Iowa Law Review 81 (1996): 589–639.
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Sadurski, W. (1999). Speech and Harm. In: Freedom of Speech and Its Limits. Law and Philosophy Library, vol 38. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-9342-2_3
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