Free Speech in a Free Society
Description
Members of our society hold widely differing views on appropriate public speech. The message alarms some while others are bothered by the choice of language. The program explores the extent to which the majority view, expressed in the law, is effected by the wide–spread belief that we enjoy the right of "free speech" and the scope of that constitutional right as it is understood in the law. Clashes between individual expression and society's concerns are evaluated through examples ranging from efforts to prohibit "adult" bookstores and "obscene" Tee shirts, to efforts to control content in the mass media. Included are the implications of dealing with the internet and other global media.Essay
People have reacted to offensive speech since language was first developed. As governments developed, the government, usually personified by an official, took offense to speech it regarded as inappropriate in some way. We can trace developed thought on that process at least as far back as Plato's accounts of Socrates in the Apology and in Crito where Socrates is charged and found guilty of corrupting the youth of Athens and of denying the Gods. In censoring Socrates, the state ordered that he cease his teaching under pain of death. Socrates famously refused to obey such an order which he regarded as wrongful; he refused to flee to save his life because he viewed it as his duty as a citizen to stand his ground and press the state to its remedies.While death is no longer the state's remedy for violation of its censorship orders, those who stand their ground in the face of state power do pay a price. Our early history is marked with society lashing out at those who spoke what they believed to be truth to power. The Massachusetts Bay Colony, offended by preaching critical of both governance and theology, used state power to expel both Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson. The colonial record of abuses employing essentially English law were such that when American writers of law were given their chance, Virginia led the way in 1775 with George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights guaranteeing freedom of press.
Those who led the American Revolution and struggled to establish our charter of government and Bill of Rights combined their understanding of English law with their experience in speaking critically of their government, and then forming the government others criticized. Contrary to popular belief, there was no developed "right" of free speech, and the freedom of the press protected publication but did not prevent subsequent punishments.
How and why the United States developed a unique concept of freedom of expression makes an interesting and instructive story. Radical Jeffersonian views about people power and revolution, moderated by Madisonian views about constructive engagement in the very late 18th Century, provided a foundation on which little would be built until the government suppression of speech in the World War I era. Legally speaking, free speech is the product of the last 80 years. Philosophically and socially, the roots go back to John Milton in the 17th Century and John Stuart Mill in the 18th Century. Looking to the philosophers, Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Benjamin Cardozo in the 1920's and 1930's framed the modern theories for freedom of speech.
The presentation explains how those theories have been applied to our experience during World War II, the McCarthy Era and the social revolution that has marked the past 40 years. Finally, the audience will face the issues of regulating obscenity, the internet, criticism of the government in time of war and concerns of their own. In the process, we will discover whether the theories of the law are relevant and effective.
