Many times, the circumstances that are required in order to give rise to more principle within a legal society are odd, extreme, or very specific. This does make sense, however; if the cases did not have these peculiar qualities, it is very likely that simple precedent would have been enough for a lower level judge to make a perfectly valid ruling.
With that being said, I think the qualities of these cases are actually important to the United States especially. It teaches us a lesson; hard cases in the supreme court are often times not about the case itself, but the rhetoric that emerges, as judges try to articulate nuanced differences between the one case, and countless others that weren't granted cert. by the court.
The fact that most free speech cases involve either racist advocates, or anti-communist suppression, contributes to the idea that the idea of free speech involved in the cases is more important than the normative value contained in the circumstance in the speech.
It is true that in most cases dealing with free speech, we end up defending someone with very bigoted and unacceptable views. So like you said, as a society we must ask ourselves what our priorities are. Is it more important to defend free speech or the values and integrity a democratic society claims to hold? I am a firm believer that free speech is extremely important and is necessary for a nation like ours to thrive, however, how far must we take free speech? Sometimes when I think of defending white supremacists or anti-gay organizations it seems wrong that we allow this to happen. Do you think it may be possible to use free speech, but only to a certain degree? Most would say no, because not allowing someone to fully speak their mind in itself eliminates their freedom of speech. but I am curious if anyone thinks it is possible to not tolerate some views while still keeping some form of free speech in our country?
ReplyDeleteThe remedy for bad speech is almost always more speech, not suppression.
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