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Full-Text Articles in Law
Racial Defamation As Free Speech: Abusing The First Amendment, Kenneth Lasson
Racial Defamation As Free Speech: Abusing The First Amendment, Kenneth Lasson
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The traditional view of the first amendment's free speech guarantee as absolute, allowing few and narrow exceptions, reflects the Constitution's dedication to an open and unfettered exchange of ideas. Those thoughts that are abhorrent to a free society, the argument goes, will wither when aired but fester if suppressed. Moreover, who is to decide which ideas are offensive? The interests of the state may well be inferior to those of the people, the wisdom of public servants often suspect in quality and motivation. But freedom of speech is so precious and delicate a liberty it must be preserved at great …
In Defense Of Group-Libel Laws, Or Why The First Amendment Should Not Protect Nazis, Kenneth Lasson
In Defense Of Group-Libel Laws, Or Why The First Amendment Should Not Protect Nazis, Kenneth Lasson
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The author discusses group libel laws, and the underlying problems when free speech is used as a defense by those who would defame specific racial or ethnic groups and/or minorities. The topic is further explained in reference to various state laws, and the subsequent court cases extant at the time of the article's writing which defined the issue in terms of law. References are also made to such laws in countries other than the United States for the sake of comparison.
Group Libel Versus Free Speech: When Big Brother Should Butt In, Kenneth Lasson
Group Libel Versus Free Speech: When Big Brother Should Butt In, Kenneth Lasson
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The year 1984 may not have fulfilled Orwellian prophecies of governmental totalitarianism, but citizens of the world remain no less concerned about the quality of their civil liberties. If people could live peacefully and productively together under a strict caste system, or blissfully in enslavement, there would be little impetus to identify 'natural rights' nor insistence upon what we know as 'freedom.' But human experience has amply demonstrated the universal yearning for personal liberty, as well as the need to legislate against its deprivation.
Thus Big Brother has been the enemy from long before the Magna Carta and long since …