In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

No. 99-1811

Caren Cronk Thomas and Windy City

Hemp Development Board,

Plaintiffs-Appellants,

v.

Chicago Park District,

Defendant-Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 97 C 2963--George M. Marovich, Judge.

Argued April 19, 2000--Decided September 14, 2000

 Before Posner, Coffey and Easterbrook, Circuit Judges.

 Posner, Circuit Judge. Among the regulations of

the Chicago Park District governing the use of

its parks is one requiring that a permit be

obtained for an assembly, parade, demonstration,

sporting event, or other use of the park by a

group of 50 or more persons. Chi. Park Dist. Code

ch. VII sec. C. The regulation spells out the

criteria for the grant of such a permit, and the

procedures for obtaining it and for challenging

its denial, in considerable detail. The

plaintiffs, who want to use the park for rallies

in favor of repealing the laws criminalizing the

sale of marijuana, claim that the regulation

violates the free-speech clause of the First

Amendment "on its face," that is, without regard

to whether the regulation has been applied in

such a way as to infringe the right of free

speech. Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement,

505 U.S. 123, 129-30 (1992); Lakewood v. Plain

Dealer Publishing Co., 486 U.S. 750, 755-59

(1988); North Avenue Novelties, Inc. v. City of

Chicago, 88 F.3d 441, 444 (7th Cir. 1996).

"Challenges to statutes as written, without

inquiring into their application, are appropriate

when details of implementation are

inconsequential (usually because nothing could be

done in the course of application to save the

law) or when the laws are so overbroad that the
risk of improper application leads persons to

withdraw from the borderland. Fear of penalty,

leading to a reduction in speech, supports the

doctrine that a person whose speech lawfully

could be regulated may challenge a statute

achieving regulation in an improper way, or to an

excessive extent." Harp Advertising Illinois,

Inc. v. Village of Chicago Ridge, 9 F.3d 1290,

1291-92 (7th Cir. 1993). The plaintiffs claim

that because a regulation that requires

permission to hold a political rally in a "public

forum" (as the Chicago Park District’s parks are

conceded to be) imposes a "prior restraint" on

the exercise of free speech, it must, to pass

constitutional muster, be free of any element of

vagueness or uncertainty that might enable the

regulation to be enforced in such a way as to

deter or impede the exercise of this most

celebrated of constitutional rights.

 We do not find this a helpful formula. The

historical referent of "prior restraints" is

censorship, see 4 William Blackstone,

Commentaries on the Laws of England 151-53

(1769), which the administration of a park system

does not much resemble. The statement in the

plaintiffs’ brief that "denial of a permit to

hold a rally is the ultimate censorship" is

hollow rhetoric. It is a censor’s business to

make a judgment about the propriety of the

content or message of the proposed expressive

activity. Because he is in the business of

suppressing such activity (friends of free speech

are not drawn to a career in censorship), the

danger of abuse is very great, especially when

assessed in light of the dismal history of

censorship. The regulation challenged here does

not authorize any judgment about the content of

any speeches or other expressive activity--their

dangerousness, offensiveness, immorality, and so

forth. It is not even clear that the regulation

reduces the amount of speech. A park is a limited

space, and to allow unregulated access to all

comers could easily reduce rather than enlarge

the park’s utility as a forum for speech. See Cox

v. New Hampshire, 312 U.S. 569, 574-76 (1941);

cf. Beal v. Stern, 184 F.3d 117, 128-29 (2d Cir.

1999). Just imagine two rallies held at the same

time in the same park area using public-address

systems that drowned out each other’s speakers.

Cf. Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U.S. 781

(1989). The heterogeneity of the practices that

the "prior restraints" formula covers (with the

present case compare Freedman v. Maryland, 380

U.S. 51 (1965), involving a movie censorship

board) is reason to doubt that it can provide

much assistance to judges who have to decide a

novel case.

 The problem is general. General language, the
language in which legal principles are couched,

tends not to help much in the decision of cases

in which weighty interests are on both sides of

the balance that the court is asked to strike.

Thus in this case there is, on the one hand, a

danger in giving officials broad discretion over

which political rallies shall be permitted to be

conducted on public property, because they will

be tempted to exercise that discretion in favor

of their political friends and against their

political enemies--and the advocates of

legalizing the sale of marijuana and other

controlled substances have very few political

friends. But, on the other hand, a permit

requirement is a sine qua non of managing a park

system in a way that will preserve the value of

the parks for the general public. Parks are

primarily for recreation rather than for

political and ideological agitation. They cannot

be preserved in the primary use for which they

are intended if any group can hold a rally of any

size and length at any time with amplified sound

of any volume. Clark v. Community for Creative

Non-Violence, 468 U.S. 288, 296 (1984). Indeed,

as we noted earlier, without regulation even the

agitators might not be able to get their message

across.

 The competing interests cannot be weighed in the

abstract in other than the grossest sense, and so

a "correct" balance cannot be struck. This must

give pause to any court minded to strike down a

permit regulation on its face and so without

consideration of its application to a particular

event for which a permit was denied. A challenge

to the wording as distinct from the actual

application of a regulation invites semantic nitpicking and judicial usurpation of the

legislative drafting function in an effort to

avert, without creating loopholes, dangers at

best hypothetical and at worst chimerical. The

problem is well illustrated by this case as we

consider the plaintiffs’ objections to the

regulation, all of which the district court

rejected en route to granting judgment for the

park district after another panel of this court

reversed the grant of a preliminary injunction.

MacDonald v. Chicago Park District, 132 F.3d 355

(7th Cir. 1997).

 The regulation authorizes the denial of a permit

on a variety of grounds none of which has

anything to do with the content of expressive

activity. Chi. Park Dist. Code ch. VII sec.

C5(e). One is that the applicant "has on prior

occasions made material misrepresentations

regarding the nature or scope of any event or

activity previously permitted." The plaintiffs

contend that the word "material" is excessively

vague. The contention is frivolous. The word is
one of the elemental legal terms, and is

considered quite definite enough to form the

keystone of criminal prohibitions against fraud.

The residual vagueness that it shares with most

words could be eliminated only by eliminating it

from the regulation, but that would make the

regulation more rather than less restrictive. The

plaintiffs say that "misrepresentation" is vague

too, and would prefer "falsehood." They have not

suggested a substitute for "material" and so in

effect they want us to rewrite the regulation so

that it authorizes denying a permit to anyone who

has told the park district a fib. All that their

contention regarding the vagueness of "material

misrepresentation" shows is the limits of

language and so the inherent limitations of

"facial" challenges.

 They complain that the grounds for denial of a

permit are permissive. The park district "may"

deny a permit because of a misrepresentation, the

failure to tender the fee, having damaged

property of the park district on a previous

occasion, or other grounds listed in the

regulation, but it is not required to; it can

forgive. The plaintiffs argue that this power of

mercy arms the park district to pick and choose

among applicants on political grounds. It indeed

creates such a danger; but if this discretionary

feature of the regulation were excised, the

regulation would be more restrictive than it is

(just as it would be if "falsehood" were

substituted for "material misrepresentation").

This is another example of how free speech is so

often on both sides of the balance in cases of

the regulation as distinct from the prohibition

of speech, a consideration that should make

courts hesitant to invalidate such regulations.

An even clearer example is a provision of the

ordinance waiving the required permit fee for

events protected by the First Amendment. The

plaintiffs complain that this is vague, but do

not indicate how it could be made less vague yet

encompass the myriad activities that the First

Amendment has been held to protect. Curtailing

speech is an odd way of protecting speech.

 The regulation requires applicants for permits

to obtain liability insurance in the amount of $1

million to indemnify the park district against

liability arising from a rally that might

degenerate into a riot. (That is the amount of

the policy, not the premium, which for the type

of event envisaged by the plaintiffs would not

exceed $1,200.) The plaintiffs argue ingeniously

that since violence to person or property

incidental to a political rally is likely to

arise from the unpopularity of the cause espoused

by the rally’s sponsors or speakers, the

requirement of buying insurance amounts to a
"heckler’s veto," which the cases hold is not a

proper basis for restricting free speech. Forsyth

County v. Nationalist Movement, supra, 505 U.S.

at 134-35; Terminiello v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 1, 4-

5 (1949); Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 536, 551-52

(1965); Chicago Acorn v. Metropolitan Pier &

Exposition Authority, 150 F.3d 695, 701 (7th Cir.

1998). But the amount of insurance required is

not based on, or, so far as has been shown,

influenced by, the nature of the event, and

specifically by whether it involves controversial

expressive activity likely to incite violence by

onlookers or opponents. The required amount and

the cost of the insurance depend only on the size

of the event and the nature of the facilities

involved in it (a bandstand, stage, tents, and so

forth).

 The park district requires that applications for

permits be filed 30 days in advance--60 days if

special facilities are to be involved, such as

sound amplification, which unless limited can

violate the city’s noise ordinance. The

plaintiffs argue that these periods are too long

and inhibit rallies responding to fresh news and

startling events. But since thousands of permit

applications are filed with the park district

every year, it would be burdensome to require the

park to process the applications in a

significantly shorter time. The park district’s

policy, moreover, is to allow "spontaneous"

rallies in reaction to current events. The

opportunities for abuse are manifest but are

minimized by the fact that if there is abuse the

victims can bring a judicial challenge to the

permit regulation as applied to them.

 The plaintiffs reserve their strongest objection

for the regulation’s failure to provide for

searching judicial review of permit denials. They

also complain about the absence of any deadline

for the completion of such judicial review as the

law affords them, not noticing the tension with

their desire that the review be penetrating and

meticulous--which takes time. In Graff v. City of

Chicago, 9 F.3d 1309 (7th Cir. 1993) (en banc),

the full court confronted the same issues of the

adequacy and timing of judicial review in the

context of an ordinance regulating newsstands on

the city’s sidewalks. The court was badly

fractured, but counting noses one discovers that

a majority believed that the judicial review

procedure was good enough for a regulation of

expressive activity when the regulation is not a

form of censorship, that is, does not require or

permit the regulatory authority to evaluate the

content or message of the activity regulated. Id.

at 1324-25 (plurality opinion), 1330-33

(concurring opinion). This regulation does not.
 Review of agency action in Illinois is governed

by an administrative procedure act (similar to

the federal act, International College of

Surgeons v. City of Chicago, 153 F.3d 356, 364

(7th Cir. 1998))--but only if the statute

creating the agency so provides. 735 ILCS 5/3-

104. If it does not so provide, and it does not

with respect to the park district’s denial of

permit applications, the agency’s action is

reviewable only by means of a proceeding for

common law certiorari. But this turns out to be a

distinction without a difference. The proceeding

is instituted in the same state court that would

review the action under the administrative

procedure act, Smith v. Department of Public Aid,

367 N.E.2d 1286, 1293 (1977), and although the

standard of review is stated in different words

from those used in that act, it amounts to the

usual substantial-evidence review that is

familiar from administrative law. The reviewing

court does not take evidence but relies on the

record compiled in the administrative proceeding

and seeks only to determine whether the agency’s

legal conclusions are correct and the agency’s

factual conclusions supported by substantial

evidence, e.g., Norton v. Nicholson, 543 N.E.2d

1053, 1059 (Ill. 1989), or in other words not

clearly erroneous. The review process is thus the

same as under the state’s administrative

procedure act--as indeed the Supreme Court of

Illinois stated in Hanrahan v. Williams, 673

N.E.2d 251, 253-54 (Ill. 1996).

 The plaintiffs argue that the park district

should in every case in which it denies a permit

be required to seek judicial review of its own

action. The argument is based on a misreading of

Freedman v. Maryland, supra, 380 U.S. at 58-59,

which holds only that the government may not

regulate the content of speech without judicial

authorization and so does not extend to time,

place, and manner licensing systems. The Supreme

Court made that clear in FW/PBS, Inc. v. City of

Dallas, 493 U.S. 215, 228-230 (1990) (plurality

opinion), id. at 244 (concurring opinion), id. at

249 (concurring and dissenting opinion).

 But their principal complaint about the

judicial-review procedure we’ve outlined, other

than the lack of a deadline for the court’s

decision, is that there is no provision for an

oral hearing. An applicant denied a permit can

appeal the denial to the park district’s

superintendent, and submit any documents he

wants, and the district must give written reasons

for its action. But all submissions are in

writing and therefore, the plaintiffs argue, the

record compiled before the park district is

insufficient to enable meaningful judicial review

of the superintendent’s action. The argument is
defeated by the plaintiffs’ own emphasis on the

importance of expedition. The regulation requires

the park district to act on a permit application

within 28 days and an appeal from the denial of

such an application to be decided by the

superintendent within 7 days. These deadlines are

too tight to permit an evidentiary hearing with

oral testimony, cross-examination, and the other

accouterments of a trial. The plaintiffs have to

choose between orality and expedition; they

refuse to do so.

 The entire emphasis on judicial review and

evidentiary hearings is misplaced. If a person

denied a permit for reasons that he believes

violate the First Amendment is dissatisfied with

a paper record reviewed in state court by means

of common law certiorari, he has only to bring a

suit in federal district court and if the matter

is urgent to seek as these plaintiffs’

predecessor (the deceased MacDonald) did a

preliminary injunction. See Patsy v. Board of

Regents, 457 U.S. 496 (1982); Van Harken v. City

of Chicago, 103 F.3d 1346 (7th Cir. 1997);

Hameetman v. City of Chicago, 776 F.2d 636 (7th

Cir. 1985). Given that the plaintiffs have two

remedies, one in state court and the other in

federal court, the possible inadequacies of the

state remedy, inadequacies in any event balanced

by the expedition that barring oral testimony

permits, are trivial.

 The plaintiffs fear that the required expedition

at the administrative level will be undone by

foot dragging at the state court level, since

there is no deadline on when the state court must

render its decision in a common law certiorari

proceeding. It is of course unusual though not

unknown to impose a time limit on judges, the

fear being that it will both disrupt the orderly

management of a judicial docket and conduce to

hasty decision making. Since 42 U.S.C. sec. 1983,

the statute under which federal constitutional

claims are litigated in the federal courts, does

not impose any requirement (with immaterial

exceptions) of exhausting state judicial

remedies, the victim of foot dragging in state

court can always bring a parallel suit in federal

court, complaining that the delay is denying him

an adequate remedy for the violation of his

constitutional rights.

 Although a number of cases hold that judicial

review of the denial of a permit must indeed be

"deadlined," Baby Tam & Co. v. City of Las Vegas,

154 F.3d 1097, 1101-02 (9th Cir. 1998); 11126

Baltimore Blvd., Inc. v. Prince George’s County,

58 F.3d 988, 998-1001 (4th Cir. 1995) (en banc);

East Brooks Books, Inc. v. City of Memphis, 48

F.3d 220, 224-25 (6th Cir. 1995); Redner v. Dean,
29 F.3d 1495, 1501-02 (11th Cir. 1994); contra,

City News & Novelty, Inc. v. City of Waukesha,

604 N.W.2d 870, 881-82 (Wis. App. 1999), cert.

granted, 120 S. Ct. 2687 (2000); TK’s Video, Inc.

v. Denton County, 24 F.3d 705, 707-09 (5th Cir.

1994), they all involve special licensing regimes

for sexually oriented businesses. They are based

on Supreme Court cases involving censorship, such

as the Freedman case cited earlier, or quasicensorship, such as the ordinance at issue in

FW/PBS, Inc. v. City of Dallas, supra, which

required the licensing of such businesses. The

government’s evident concern with the content of

the "speech" disseminated by such businesses

argues for greater judicial vigilance than in

time, place, and manner cases, in which our

rejection of deadlining in Graff, 9 F.3d at 1324-

25, stands uncontradicted. Cf. Jews for Jesus,

Inc. v. Massachusetts Bay Transportation

Authority, 984 F.2d 1319, 1327 (1st Cir. 1993).

Realism required recognition of the danger that

state courts might drag their heels in deciding

appeals by sexually oriented businesses from

denials of licenses. The permit requirement at

issue here is far more general and so far as

appears the permits that are denied do not relate

to controversial or unpopular expression.

Especially in the absence of any showing, which

has not been attempted, that the Chicago Park

District is trying to restrict the expression of

unpopular ideas or that the state courts are not

acting with reasonable promptitude on appeals

from permit denials, a more relaxed attitude

toward the pace of judicial review is warranted

than in the case of regulation targeted at

unpopular expression. Cf. Ward v. Rock Against

Racism, supra, 491 U.S. at 795; Stokes v. City of

Madison, 930 F.2d 1163, 1170 (7th Cir. 1991);

MacDonald v. Safir, 206 F.3d 183, 191 (2d Cir.

2000).

Affirmed.