Law Commons^™

O'Er The Land Of The Free: Flag Burning As Speech, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

I am honored to lecture at this school, which has a number of friends, and a much larger circle of scholars whose work I admire. I am honored to lecture in the memory of Melville Nimmer, one of the country's leading thinkers on freedom of speech as well as its foremost expert on copyright. I met Professor Nimmer only once, at a lunch with Vince Blasi. My recollection of the lunch is distinct. Gently and in the most friendly way, but with irrefutable logic, they showed me that a position I had held for more than a decade about immigration …

Learned Hand And The Self-Government Theory Of The First Amendment: Masses Publishing Co. V. Patten, Vincent A. Blasi

Faculty Scholarship

Sitting as a federal district judge in the case of Masses Publishing Co. v. Patten, Learned Hand was called upon to interpret the Espionage Act of 1917 just six weeks after its passage. The Act was potentially the most speech-restrictive piece of federal legislation since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. Judge Hand recognized this and ruled that the terms of the Act must be construed in light of the first amendment. He defined the limits of legally protected war criticism, and presumably of political advocacy generally, according to a test that makes the crucial consideration the content of …

Insults And Epithets: Are They Protected Speech?, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

It is a privilege to offer a lecture in this series named for Edward J. Bloustein. Not many lecture series honor sitting university presidents who deliver the first lecture in the series; but President Bloustein is the very rare president whose long tenure in office has been accompanied by continuing academic productivity. That achievement is remarkable.

When I tentatively chose this topic a year ago, I knew it involved the application of philosophical insights to serious practical questions, the kind of work that President Bloustein has done so well. I also knew that the search for those aspects of human …