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Can Moving Pictures Speak? Silent Film, Free Speech, And Social Science In Early 20th Century Law, Jennifer Petersen

Studio for Law and Culture

When the Supreme Court was first confronted with a First Amendment case involving film, it was confronted with a difficult and fascinating question: were silent films speech? The decision in the case, Mutual v. Ohio (1915), famously answered no. The decision is usually understood to be part of a tradition of interpretations of the First Amendment as applying primarily to political opinion; in this reading, film was not protected because it was entertainment and/or commerce. However, Mutual also contains a set of arguments about the nature of film as more akin to action than to speech — arguments embedded in …