First Amendment

Are you an absolutistor a relativist?

Nat Hentoff: Absolutist

• Northeastern graduate

• Wrote liner notes for John Coltrane and Bob Dylan

• First Amendment views formed by getting kicked off the News

Robert Bork: Relativist

• Served Richard Nixon

• Failed Supreme Court nominee

• Blames liberal judges for protecting “vulgarity and obscenity”

Understanding“make 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

Hentoff on obscenity

• Founders were unconcerned

• Supreme Court didn’t mention until 1957

• Brennan, in Roth, introduced social value

Lenny Bruce

• A satirist with a dirty mouth

• How do you define social value?

• Won on appeal, but it was too late

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

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