Free Speech Zones Aff
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- This is empirically confirmed- speech restrictions are implemented in racist ways. ACLU
a2 hate speech cardsThe right to free speech is indivisible and speech restrictions necessarily spill over. Friedersdorf:Conor Friedersdorf. The Lessons of Bygone Free-Speech Fights. The Atlantic, 12/10/15. JY. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/what-student-activists-can-learn-from-bygone-free-speech-fights/419178/ But Professor Gale argued that because their acts weren’t targeted at an individual, and didn’t occur in a place, like a classroom, where students were a captive audience, it wouldn’t run afoul of hostile climate laws. Some of you might have noticed that she deliberately crafted that example as a campus analog of the famous case of Nazis who wanted to march through a town with many Holocaust survivors. The ACLU successfully defended their rights to do so. Why would a group that so frequently champions the rights of marginalized people defend a bigot’s right to behave so abhorrently? The ACLU argued that “restricting the speech of one group or individual jeopardizes everyone’s rights. The same laws or regulations used to silence bigots can be used to silence you. And laws that defend free speech for bigots can be used to defend the rights of civil rights workers, anti-war protesters, lesbian and gay activists and others fighting for justice. In 1949, the ACLU defended an ex-priest who had delivered a racist and anti-semitic speech. The legal precedent in that case became the basis for the ACLU’s successful defense of civil rights demonstrators.” I have never yet seen a critic of the ACLU persuasively respond to that example. In fact, the First Amendment has protected lampooning a member of the religious right by portraying him as having sex with his drunken mother in an outhouse. It has protected putting a crucifix in a jar of urine. It has protected burning an American flag outside a Veteran’s hospital. It would protect a sign that says, “Donald Trump is a fascist asshole,” or “white people are evil and should be shunned.” And, of course, the First Amendment protected the right of Nazis to march in Skokie. With that case in mind, consider how different today’s free-speech conflicts are. There are a lot of thorny debates about the outer limits of the First Amendment. But today's campus speech debates aren’t about neo-Nazis or hooded klansmen, any more than America’s torture debate was about a terrorist in Times Square with a ticking timebomb and Jack Bauer on the way with brass knuckles and pliers. Some students and administrators at public universities are flagrantly violating the First Amendment over costume parties and student journalists photographing protesters. At private colleges, they are trying to target, suppress, or punish speech that’s neither “fighting words” nor “hate speech” nor “group libel” nor targeted at individuals nor likely to produce serious psychological harm. 20 years ago, opponents of speech codes warned that those with the impulse to suppress any speech were putting us on a slippery slope; that core, protected speech would inevitably be punished or chilled. Today’s campus-speech battles suggest they were correct. Viewing hate speech as a harm exception creates perverse incentives and justifies broad restrictions, as there is no principled way to determine what speech is harmful. Epstein:Richard Epstein (professor of law at NYU). “Free Speech and sexual harassment at Yale.” Newsweek. 10/27/16. JY. But the harm principle contains much built-in ambiguity. It can only be clarified within a complete theory of freedom of speech, which itself must rest upon a comprehensive theory of freedom of human action. At the very least, any speech that involves the threat of force or the use of fraud should be subject to sanction under this principle, given the risk to the autonomy of others. That is why both assault and defamation have long been actionable harms. But by the same token, the harm principle can never be extended to cover cases where one person takes offense at the speech or conduct of other individuals—which is why flag-burning, however distasteful to most people, nonetheless receives constitutional protection. That extension of the harm principle, if applied uniformly to all speech acts, means that anyone who takes offense gets the right to sanction, if not veto, the speech of others, at which point no one can speak at all. To forestall this risk, the great principle of toleration requires suspending the use of formal sanctions against disagreeable speech. Failure to follow this principle introduces the most dangerous set of incentives, by allowing any person to magnify his or her own indignation and outrage as a means to assert greater control over the speech of others. The danger of this position is apparent. The broader definition that equates harm with offense can only work if it is selectively applied. Thus protected groups get to complain loudly about the microaggressions against them, but they, in turn, are entitled to venomously attack those with whom they disagree. A culture of free speech and open inquiry cannot long survive using this broad and selective definition of harm. Only a strong norm of content neutrality can protect marginalized voices. Speech restrictions can only solve oppression if there is a public consensus against hate speech. But weakening the norm leads to worse oppression if public opinion shifts. Gates:Henry Louis Gates (W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University, Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University). “Let Them Talk.” The New Republic. September 20, 1993. JY. At first blush, this is a surprising claim. After all, if racist speech really were universally rejected, ordinances against it would be an exercise in antiquarianism. And yet there is something in what Matsuda says: a shared assumption about the weight of the anti-racist consensus, a conviction that at least overt racists are an unpopular minority, that authority is likely to side with us against them. This hopeful conviction about the magnitude of racist expression in America provides the hidden and rather unexpected foundation for the hate speech movement. Why would you entrust authority with enlarged powers of regulating the speech of unpopular minorities, unless you were confident that the unpopular minorities would be racists, not blacks? Lawrence may know that racial incidents are never "isolated," but he must also believe them to be less than wholly systemic. You don't go to the teacher to complain about the school bully unless you know that the teacher is on your side. The tacit confidence of critical race theory in the anti-racist consensus also enables its criticism of neutral principles. This becomes clear when one considers the best arguments in favor of such principles. Thus David Coles, a law professor at Georgetown University, suggests that in a democratic society the only speech government is likely to succeed in regulating will be that of the politically marginalized. If an idea is sufficiently popular, a representative government will lack the political wherewithal to suppress it, irrespective of the First Amendment. But if an idea is unpopular, the only thing that may protect it from the majority is a strong constitutional norm of content-neutrality. This is empirically confirmed- speech restrictions are implemented in racist ways. ACLU:American Civil Liberties Union. “Hate speech on campus.” Accessed 12/14/16. JY. Q: Aren't speech codes on college campuses an effective way to combat bias against people of color, women and gays? A: Historically, defamation laws or codes have proven ineffective at best and counter-productive at worst. For one thing, depending on how they're interpreted and enforced, they can actually work against the interests of the people they were ostensibly created to protect. Why? Because the ultimate power to decide what speech is offensive and to whom rests with the authorities -- the government or a college administration -- not with those who are the alleged victims of hate speech. In Great Britain, for example, a Racial Relations Act was adopted in 1965 to outlaw racist defamation. But throughout its existence, the Act has largely been used to persecute activists of color, trade unionists and anti-nuclear protesters, while the racists -- often white members of Parliament -- have gone unpunished. Similarly, under a speech code in effect at the University of Michigan for 18 months, white students in 20 cases charged black students with offensive speech. One of the cases resulted in the punishment of a black student for using the term "white trash" in conversation with a white student. The code was struck down as unconstitutional in 1989 and, to date, the ACLU has brought successful legal challenges against speech codes at the Universities of Connecticut, Michigan and Wisconsin. These examples demonstrate that speech codes don't really serve the interests of persecuted groups. The First Amendment does. As one African American educator observed: "I have always felt as a minority person that we have to protect the rights of all because if we infringe on the rights of any persons, we'll be next." Attempts to restrict free speech for only whites/other identity group exacerbate racism and codify historical injustices into constitutional law, which harms anti-racist effortsByrne 91 [J. Peter Byrne (Associate Professor, Georgetown University Law Center), "Racial Insults and Free Speech Within the University," Georgetown Law Journal, 1991] AZ Professor Matsuda also argues that only hate speech directed at members of subjugated groups by members of dominant groups forfeits first amendment protection. 56 Thus, while epithets directed at blacks, for example, would be actionable, those directed at whites would not. Although the vulnerability of historically disadvantaged groups has brought racial insults to a new prominence, it seems wrong both pragmatically and in principle to condition first amendment protection or the political positions of the speaker's and target's ethnic groups. Professor Matsuda acknowledges that the linedrawing becomes harder if the hateful speech is directed at the white target's gender, sexual preference, religious affiliation, age, poverty, or handicap. 57 Further confusion exists because Professor Matsuda concedes that a group's status as subjugated can change position over time and in different localities.58 She professes herself unconcerned by the sheer difficulty of such determinations, dismissing concerns with the observation: "The larger question is how anyone knows anything in life or in law. To conceptualize a condition called subordination is a legitimate alternative to denying that such a condition exists." 59 But surely one can acknowledge the reality of social inequality without accepting a legal procedure, backed by the powerful apparatus of criminal prosecution, which determines whether an offended individual belongs to a relevant group that suffers subordination in a certain place and time. Are black males "subordinate" today in Washington, D.C.? How should a court factor the respective views of Asians, women, or Boston black males on this question? Can it be doubted that trials over these issues, the outcome of which will determine whether a member of one of these groups will suffer a criminal penalty, would exacerbate tensions among members of these groups? Such inquiries into relative subjugation would not only be supremely difficult, but they would also be unable to achieve political or constitutional legitimacy. If, as Professor Matsuda urges, legal approaches to hate speech should turn on the experience of the victims qua victims, it is difficult to see how the outcomes can appear to be justified to non-victims. Generally, constitutional rules are justified by reference to some shared (if also disputed) public value, such as equality or the dignity of individuals. Advocates of the prohibition of hate speech would forfeit much to rely on the feeling of historical injustice. Most groups in American society nurse grievances for past wrongs. All racial and ethnic insults imply debasement of the individual through the invocation of the stereotypical vices of his or her group. To elevate some of these insults into constitutional standards but leave others beyond the reach of law denies our common humanity Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 1.19 Mb. Share with your friends:
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