Abstract
The notion of “viewpoint neutrality” may partly owe its impact to the popularity of the notion of “neutrality” in other contexts of liberal political and legal theory. For example, in the context of the relationship between state and religion, the notion of state neutrality towards religion has often been thought to be the best interpretation of the complex set of rules governing the relationship between law and religion in liberal-democratic states. As Sidney Hook wrote some years ago, “a genuinely democratic state, especially one which contains a plurality of religious faiths, should be neutral in matters of religion, and regard it as essentially a private matter”.1 In the United States, the Supreme Court has repeatedly asserted its commitment to “a scrupulous neutrality by the State, as among religions, and also between religious and other activities”.2 To be sure, this ideal of state neutrality towards religion is far from being uncontroversial. In a 1985 decision, the then Justice Rehnquist opined that “nothing in the Establishment Clause requires government to be strictly neutral between religion and irreligion”.3 Nevertheless, it is certainly a well entrenched idiom within this strand of doctrinal and judicial opinions which emphasize the need to maintain as strict a separation as possible between the secular state and religious beliefs and institutions, and which demand that the law should be prevented “from entering the purely private domain of religious expression and belief”.4
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References
Sidney Hook, Religion in a Free Society (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. 27.
See also Wojciech Sadurski, “Introduction” in Law and Religion ed. by Wojciech Sadurski (Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1992), pp. xi–xxiii.
Roemer v. Board of Public Works, 426 U.S. 744, 746–47 (1976). For other examples of judicial appeals to the concept of neutrality, see Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306, 314 (1952); Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97, 103 (1968); Gillette v. United States, 401 U.S. 437, 449 (1971); Jones v. Wolf, 443 U.S. 595, 602 (1979).
Wallace v. Jaffree, All U.S. 38, 113 (1985) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting).
Jonathan Weiss, “Privilege, Posture and Protection: ‘Religion’ in the Law”, Yale Law Journal 73 (1964): 593–623, p. 623.
I have discussed the relationship between the “harm to others” principle and the idea of moral neutrality of the liberal state in my Moral Pluralism and Legal Neutrality (Dordrecht: Kluwer 1990), chap. 4, and in “The Moral Neutrality of the Liberal State”, Synthesis Philosophica 9 (1994): 101–14.
Police Department of Chicago v. Mosley, 408 U.S. 92, 95 (1972).
408 U.S. at 96, quoting New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 270 (1964), emphases added.
R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377, 415 (1992) (Blackmun, J., concurring). See also Cass R. Sunstein, “Low Value Speech Revisited”, Northwestern University Law Review 83 (1989): 555–61, pp. 557–8.
Police Department of Chicago v. Mosley, 408 U.S. 92, 96 (1972), emphasis added.
Id. at 99, emphasis added.
Id. at 99, references omitted.
Id. at 96.
See Perry Educ. Ass’n v. Perry Local Educators Ass’n, 460 U.S. 37 (1983) (school mail system); Lehman v. City of Shaker Heights, 418 U.S. 298 (1974) (city buses); Greer v. Spock, 424 U.S. 828 (1976) (military reservations); Lamb’s Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School District, 508 U.S. 384 (1993) (public school buildings). However, note that as late as 1979, in a case concerning the placement of politically controversial inserts in envelopes containing bills sent by a public utility (therefore, somewhat resembling a non-public forum over which the government has legitimate regulatory interests), the Court proclaimed that “[t]he First Amendment’s hostility to content-based regulation extends not only to restrictions on particular viewpoints, but also to prohibition of public discussion of an entire topic”, Consolidated Edison Co. v. Public Service Comm’n, 447 U.S. 530, 537 (1980).
115 S.Ct. 2510 (1995).
Zdrahal v. Wellington City Council, [1995] 1 NZLR 700 (HC), discussed in Bede Harris, “Viewpoint Neutrality and Freedom of Expression in New Zealand”, Otago Law Review 8 (1996): 515–38.
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Charles Fried, “The Supreme Court, 1994 Term — Foreword: Revolutions?”, Harvard Law Review 109 (1995): 13–77, p. 68.
115 S.Ct. at 2518.
Id.
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Id.
Geoffrey R. Stone, “Content Regulation and the First Amendment”, William & Mary Law Review 25 (1983): 189–252, p. 198,
quoting Alexander Meiklejohn, Political Freedom (New York: Harper, 1960), p. 27.
Martin Redish, “The Content Distinction in First Amendment Analysis”, Stanford Law Review 34 (1981): 113–51, p. 131. Note that, in this particular argument, Redish lumps viewpoint-based and subject-matter-based distinctions together, and compares them with content-neutral distinctions.
Rosenberger, 115 S.Ct. at 2517, emphasis added.
For a discussion of this clash, see Sadurski, “Introduction”, pp. xi-xxi; see also, generally, Gerald Gunther, Constitutional Law (Westbury, N.Y.: Foundation Press, 1991, 12th ed.), pp. 1501–02. The Court of Appeal’s decision in Rosenberger v. Rector & Visitors of the University of Virginia rested upon the apprehension of a collision between the Establishment Clause and the Free Speech Clause, and the judgment that the University’s refusal to subsidize Wake Awake “serve[d] the compelling interest of preventing the University of Virginia from an excessive entanglement with religion”, 18 F.3d 269, 288 (4th Cir. 1994).
115 S.Ct. at 2517.
Id.
63 F.3d 581(7th Cir. 1995).
See, similarly, Luba L. Shur, “Content-Based Restrictions in a University Funding System and the Irrelevance of the Establishment Clause: Putting Wide Awake to Rest”, Virginia Law Review 81 (1995): 1665–1720, pp. 1698–99.
See e.g. Lehman v. City of Shaker Heights, 418 U.S. 298 (1974) (public transit); Greer v. Spock, 424 U.S. 828 (1976) (military base); Cornelius v. NAACP Legal Defense & Ed. Fund, 473 U.S. 788 (1985) (charity drive).
115 S.Ct. at 2548.
Id. (quoting Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U.S. 781, 791 (1989)).
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Id. n. 12. Souter declines to elaborate on how the “reasonableness” of the content distinctions would be evaluated because, as he says, “petitioners have not challenged the University’s Guideline as unreasonable”.
Id. n. 12 (quoting Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 806).
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Perry Educ. Ass’n v. Perry Local Educators Ass’n, 460 U.S. 37, 45 (1983).
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Id.
115 S.Ct. at 2548 n. 12.
508 U.S. 384, 392–93 (1993) (quoting Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 806).
460 U.S. 37, 46 (1983).
Id. at 50–51 (quoting United States Postal Service v. Council of Greenburgh Civic Ass’ns., 453 U.S. 114, 129–130 (1981), quoting Greer v. Spock, 424 U.S. 828, 836 (1976)).
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Id.
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508 U.S. at 389 n. 3 (1993).
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R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377 (1992).
Consolidated Edison Co. v. Public Service Comm’n, 447 U.S. 530, 546 (1980) (Stevens, J.), footnote omitted.
Stephen Holmes, “Gag Rules or the Politics of Omission”, in Constitutionalism and Democracy, ed. by Jon Elster & Rune Slagstad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 57.
For a distinction between these two forms of paternalism, see Joel Feinberg, The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, vol. 4: Harm to Self (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 9, 172–176
Gerald Dworkin, “Paternalism”, in Paternalism ed. by Rolf Sartorius (University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 1983), p. 22.
See Joel Feinberg, The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, vol. 1: Harm to Others (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 65–70.
United States v. Kokinda, 497 U.S. 720, 754 (1990) (Brennan, J., dissenting).
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Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15, 21 (1971).
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See Jeremy Waidron, “Mill and the Value of Moral Distress”, Political Studies 35 (1987): 410–23, pp. 416 and 420.
Kokinda, 497 U.S. at 739 (Kennedy, J., concurring).
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491 U.S. 781 (1989).
Id. at 791, quoting Clark v. Community for Creative Non-Violence, 468 U.S. 288, 293 (1984), emphasis added.
497 U.S. at 738 (Kennedy, J., concurring).
Id. at 737 and 739.
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Grossbaum v. Indianapolis-Marion County Building Authority, 63 F.3d 581 (7th Cir. 1995).
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See, similarly, Paul B. Stephan III, “The First Amendment and Content Discrimination”, Virginia Law Review 68 (1982): 203–51, pp. 233–34.
Note, “The Supreme Court, 1994 Term: Leading Cases”, Harvard Law Review 109 (1995): 111–335, p. 215 n. 43.
Id. at 214–15, footnote omitted.
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Id.
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Id., footnote omitted.
Id. at 217.
460 U.S. 37, 46 (1983).
Id. at 49.
Id. at 65 (Brennan, J., dissenting).
Id.
Consolidated Edison Co. v. Public Service Comm’n, 447 U.S. 530, 546 (1980) (Stevens, J., concurring) (quoting U.S. Const., amend. I), footnote omitted, emphases added.
See McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, 115 S. Ct. 1511 (1995).
Id. at 1518 n.8.
Id. at 1524.
418 U.S. 298 (1974).
Id. at 317 (Brennan, J., dissenting).
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Id. at 62.
Frederick Schauer, “Categories and the First Amendment: A Play in Three Acts”, Vanderbilt Law Review 34 (1981): 265–307, p. 285.
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Greer v. Spock, 424 U.S. 828 (1976).
Lehman v. Shaker Heights, 418 U.S. 298 (1974).
447 U.S. at 539.
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Virginia Pharmacy Board v. Virginia Consumer Council, 425 U.S. 748, 770 (1976).
First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765, 791 (1978), footnote omitted.
Id. at 792.
Holmes, p. 23.
Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 622 (1971), references omitted.
See Gerald Dworkin, p. 23; Cass R. Sunstein, “Legal Interference with Private Preferences”, University of Chicago Law Review 53 (1986): 1129–74, pp. 1140–45.
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Sadurski, W. (1999). Viewpoint Neutrality and Its Rationales. 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_6
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