Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 653

524US2

Unit: $U95

[09-06-00 18:40:45] PAGES PGT: OPIN

608

NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR ARTS v. FINLEY

Souter, J., dissenting

Government’s reading is directly contradicted by the legisla-
tive history. According to the provision’s author, the de-
cency and respect proviso “mandates that in the awarding of
funds, in the award process itself, general standards of de-
cency must be accorded.”
136 Cong. Rec. 28672 (1990). Or,
as the cosponsor of the bill put it, “the decisions of artistic
excellence must take into consideration general standards of
decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the
American public.”

Id., at 28624.

The Government offers a variant of this argument in sug-
gesting that even if the NEA must take decency and respect
into account in the active review of applications, it may sat-
isfy the statute by doing so in an indirect way through the
natural behavior of diversely constituted panels. This, in-
deed, has apparently been the position of the Chairperson of
the NEA since shortly after the legislation was ﬁrst passed.
But the problems with this position are obvious. First, it
deﬁes the statute’s plain language to suggest that the NEA
complies with the law merely by allowing decency and re-
spect to have their way through the subconscious inclina-
“[T]aking into consideration” is a
tions of panel members.
conscious activity. See Webster’s New International Dic-
tionary 2570 (2d ed. 1949) (deﬁning “take into consideration”
as “[t]o make allowance in judging for”); id., at 569 (deﬁning
“consideration” as the “[a]ct or process of considering; contin-
uous and careful thought; examination; deliberation; atten-
tion”); id., at 568 (deﬁning “consider” as “to think on with
care . . . to bear in mind”). Second, even assuming that di-
verse panel composition would produce a sufﬁcient response
to the proviso, that would merely mean that selection for
decency and respect would occur derivatively through the
instead of directly
inclinations of
through the intentional application of the criteria; at the end
of the day, the proviso would still serve its purpose to screen
out offending artistic works, and it would still be unconstitu-
tional. Finally, a less obvious but equally dispositive re-

the panel members,