Summum

[Scarberry, Mark]

Parks, streets and sidewalks have never been seen as forums for
placement of permanent monuments by anyone who wished to do so. Now, if
the city prohibited you from holding an anti-Ten-Commandments-monument
rally in the park, next to the Ten Commandments monument, we'd have more
to talk about.

Mark S. Scarberry
Pepperdine University School of Law
 

-----Original Message-----
From: religionlaw-bounces at lists.ucla.edu
[mailto:religionlaw-bounces at lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Bezanson,
Randall P
Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2009 5:18 PM
To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics
Subject: RE: Summum

I'm late to the discussion, but the opinion left me wondering what every
happened to "parks, streets and sidewalks" as the historic fora for free
speech under the First Amendment?  Can the government simply eliminate a
park from traditional public space for speech by the expedient of
claiming that it is in control of, or the author of, speech in a park
(monument or not)?  If so, what's left of public spaces presumed by
tradition to exist under the First Amendment?

Randy Bezanson (with apologies if this has already been discussed).
University of Iowa