Must we defend Nazis?
Subtitle: hate speech, pornography, and the new First Amendment
By: Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic.
Contributors: Stefancic, Jean.
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 224
Subjects: Freedom of speech -- United States; Hate speech -- United States; Pornography -- Law and legislation -- United States
Description: Speech in any sort of meaningful sense requires equal dignity, equal access, and equal respect on the parts of all of the speakers in a dialogue; free speech, in other words, presupposes equality. The authors argue for a system of free speech that takes into account nuance, context-sensitivity, and competing values such as human dignity and equal protection of the law.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 163-215) and index.
Table of contents: title: The opening salvo : naming the harm. Words that wound : how racist hate speech harms the victim. Law's earliest responses; title: Pornography and harm to women : how even social scientists have sometimes failed to see the need for relief; title: The assault on the citadel : legal realism shakes up orthodoxy. First Amendment formalism is giving way to First Amendment legal realism; title: Campus anti-racism rules : constitutional narratives in collision, or, why there are always two ways of looking at a speech controversy; title: Images of the outsider : why the First Amendment marketplace cannot remedy systemic social ills. Social science and narrative theory are questioning faith in the freemarket of ideas; title: Retreat to policy analysis : "even if what the crits say is so ..." Paternalistic arguments against hate-speech rules : pressure valves and bloodied chickens. The liberals' response to the crumbling of certainty; title: The toughlove school : neoconservative arguments against hate- speech regulation. ("I just let it roll off my back"); title: "But America wouldn't be America anymore" : the experience ofother countries shows that adopting hate-speech rules would not cause the skies to fall; America would be even more american; title: "From where I sit"; title: The special problems of judges and progressive lawyers. Hateful speech, loving communities : why judges are sometimes slower than others at seeing the need for reform; title: "The speech we hate" : the romantic appeal of First Amendment absolutism. Does defending Nazis really strengthen the system of free speech?