Page 12 - Delaware Lawyer - Fall 2019

FEATURE
Coast Guard Lieutenant Christopher Paul Hasson, who was arrested in February of 2019 for stockpiling weapons in prepara- tion for an attack on Democratic politi- cians and liberal journalists, was a sub- scriber to the white genocide theory who drew on the Norwegian killer Breivik for inspiration.6 The New Zealand gunman Brenton Tarrant, who killed at least 51 worshippers in an attack on a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 15, 2019, published a white genocide manifesto on his Facebook page.7
Answering to my wife, my kids, my stu- dents, I was naturally tempted to ascend to higher and higher platitudes, reciting clichés like “I may disagree with what you say but will defend your right to say it.” But that was not good enough for them. And it was not good enough for me.
The ‘Order and Morality Theory’ of Free Speech
First Amendment law in the United States is the accreted experience of hun- dreds of years of debate and hundreds of
First Amendment law in the United States is the accreted experience of hundreds of years of debate and hundreds of Supreme Court decisions.
Supreme Court decisions. Free speech law is complicated. I am the author of multiple legal treatises dealing with matters relat- ing to free speech, media and civil rights laws. They contain scores of chapters and
sub-chapters, expounding on a bewilder- ing array of multi-prong tests, and a maze of specialized rules, exceptions to rules and exceptions to exceptions to rules.
Yet on a more primal level, free speech law is not so complicated. For all its polymath complexity, for all its multiple doctrines for content discrimination, viewpoint discrimination, content-neutral regulation, time, place or manner restric- tions, traditional public forums, designat- ed public forums, limited public forums, non-forums, incitement to violence, true threats, hate speech, obscenity, child pornography, vulgarity, prior restraints, commercial speech, corporate speech, professional speech, government speech, advertising by professionals, speech of government employees, political patron- age, campaign finance, regulation of political parties, speech of public school students, speech of public school teach- ers, academic freedom, student newspa- pers, student organizations, regulation of print, cable, broadcast, satellite and inter-
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10 DELAWARE LAWYER FALL 2019