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To Swear Or Not To Swear: Using Foul Language During A Supreme Court Oral Argument, Alan Garfield
To Swear Or Not To Swear: Using Foul Language During A Supreme Court Oral Argument, Alan Garfield
Alan E Garfield
This essay considers the provocative question of whether it is strategically wise for a lawyer to use foul language during a Supreme Court oral argument. This issue doesn’t come up often. But it does when a lawyer claims his client’s First Amendment rights were violated when the government punished him for using foul language. If the lawyer doesn’t use his client’s offensive words, he risks conceding that these words are so horrid they warrant suppression. But if he does use the words, he risks alienating justices who find the words unseemly. The essay uses the “fleeting expletives” case that was …
“Reasoning-Lite” In The Violent Video Game Case, Alan Garfield
“Reasoning-Lite” In The Violent Video Game Case, Alan Garfield
Alan E Garfield
One might have expected that the Supreme Court’s recent decision in the violent video game case, Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Ass’n, would have been a thoughtful balancing of society’s competing interests in protecting freedom of speech and protecting children from harm. After all, the Supreme Court had held decades earlier that the government could deny minors access to soft-porn, or what the Court called “girlie magazines.” So one could have assumed the Court would seriously consider California’s claim that minors also needed sheltering from the grittier world of violent video game rapes, beheadings, and ethnic cleansings. Yet, as Justice Scalia’s …