1st & 14th Amendments & Hate Speech

[DavidEBernstein at aol.com]

Actually, the example of these other countries is a cautionary one;  
"exceptions" to freedom of speech originally justified by the feld need to  restrict 
speech that few felt comfortable defending--such as pro-Nazi speech and  
hardcore pornography--is gradually morphing into much broader restrictions on  
freedom of expression with regard to various controversial ideas.  For a  short 
(and four years outdated) look at the Canadian  example, see 
_http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/bernstein200312020910.asp_ 
(http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/bernstein200312020910.asp) . 
 
I've noted, wryly, that when I was in law school, those who thought like  
Matsuda (cited by Lynne) argued that if Canada, England, France, et al., could  
limit their hate speech rules to things like Holocaust denial, speech bordering 
 on incitement, and so forth, so could we.  Now that in many of these  
countries, the law are applied much more broadly, the lesson must be the  opposite: 
if Canada, England, France, et al., couldn't resist the temptation to  
gradually expand their laws well beyond their original scope, what makes us  think 
that we can.  FWIW, Eugene and I rather regularly cover especially  egregious 
examples of such "mission creep" on the Volokh Conspiracy blog.   I recall, 
offhand, Australia, Ireland, France, England, and Canada all  engaging in rather 
heavy-handed repression of speech that in the U.S. it would  occur to none but 
the most heavy-handed censor to prosecute.
 
In a message dated 3/4/2007 9:08:42 PM Eastern Standard Time,  
hendersl at ix.netcom.com writes:

The hate  speech wasn't ocnfined to nasty individuals.  Unless you think 
their  attacks on opponents  were "mainstream political attacks" --like 
hate  speech against Jews and Blacks were "mainstream" --then it is 
absurd to  say they shouldn't be subject to restraint.   Why is it we 
have  such a fetish against regulation of speech when other flourishing  
democracies--germany, the U.K., Australia, Canada, France--manage to   
have laws against Nazi or racist speech, not to mention pornography,  
but robust debate and multiple parties continue to flourish?  *See*  
Mari Matsuda, *telling the Victim's Story. . ..*,87 Mich. L. rev.vc   
The *worst* cultural indicia of our free for all is that once it's  
"free speech" somehow it becomes morally good and right to engage in  
hate speech. . . .an example of market failure straight out of Ken  
Arrow.
Respectfully
Lynne Henderson


 
 
David E.  Bernstein
Professor
George Mason University School of Law
_http://mason.gmu.edu/~dbernste  

_ (http://mason.gmu.edu/~dbernste) 
<BR><BR><BR>**************************************<BR> AOL now offers free 
email to everyone.  Find out more about what's free from AOL at 
http://www.aol.com.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.ucla.edu/pipermail/conlawprof/attachments/20070304/1c61cd1c/attachment.html