First Amendment

1
First Amendment

• Are you an absolutistor a relativist?

2
Nat Hentoff Absolutist

• Northeastern graduate
• Wrote liner notes for John Coltrane and Bob Dylan
• First Amendment views formed by getting kicked
  off the News

3
Robert Bork Relativist

• Served Richard Nixon
• Failed Supreme Court nominee
• Blames liberal judges for protecting vulgarity
  and obscenity

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Understandingmake no law

• Hentoff Any restriction on speech, even libel
  law, violates the First Amendment
• Bork The First Amendment was meant to protect
  political speech, not indecency and violence

5
Hentoff on obscenity

• Founders were unconcerned
• Supreme Court didnt mention until 1957
• Brennan, in Roth, introduced social value

6
Lenny Bruce

• A satirist with a dirty mouth
• How do you define social value?
• Won on appeal, but it was too late

7
Bork on obscenity

• Criticizes Snoop Dogg, Nine Inch Nails
• Driven by aesthetic as well as legal judgments
• Hentoff may be wrong Chaplinsky,Near v.
  Minnesota

8
Hentoff versus Bork

• Protection of political ideas versus threat of
  censorship
• A loophole for censors versus a loophole for
  pornographers
• Minority rights versus majority rule