A Stitch in Haste

As a follow-up to my last post, here's a link to an excellent primer on the current state of American law on exceptions to the First Amendment's freedom of speech and freedom of press, prepared by the Congressional Research Service (i.e., this is what members of Congress are reading). Suitable for laypersons.

If I had had this in law school, I probably would have gotten a better grade in Civil Liberties than I did.

Two things worth remembering:

--Most countries, including those in Europe, simply have no analogue to the First Amendment.

--Robert Bork was denied confirmation to the Supreme Court not for being "too conservative," but in large part for a very specific article he wrote in 1971 for the Indiana Law Journal asserting that only political speech should be covered by the First Amendment (i.e., that everything else was "an exception"). No one -- least of all Bork -- has any right to be indignant over the blocking of a man with such an un-American view of free speech from the Supreme Court.