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Reason And Passion: The Constitutional Dialectic Of Free Speech And Obscenity, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

In recent obscenity cases, the Supreme Court has been attempting to define the constitutional meaning of "speech." This is not as banal a statement as it may seem, for there are critics, both on and off the Court, who think that the Court's task is to define "freedom."

Some advocate boundless freedom in this area. For them, obscenity raises no special problems of definition, and is simply an exercise of speech or press presenting dangers which are remote and disputable, rather than clear and present. From this point of view, the only relevant distinction is that between "speech" and "conduct." …