I'm pretty close to a First Amendment absolutist. After all, what part of "Congress shall make no law" is so hard to understand. No means no.
So I'm fascinated by the juxtaposition of two Supreme Court cases: Yesterday, the court heard argument in US v. Stevens. LAT reports:
Last year, a federal appeals court, citing freedom of speech, struck down a law against selling videos with scenes of animal cruelty.
The law applied only to illegal acts of torturing or killing animals, not legal hunting or fishing. It was intended to dry up the underground market in so-called crush videos, which show squealing animals being stomped by women in high heels. More recently, it has been used to prosecute people who sell videos of pit bulls and other dogs fighting.
On Tuesday, most of the justices sounded wary of reviving the law, fearing it might be used to ban depictions of legal activities such as hunting.
Who cares whether the the depiction is of a legal or illegal activity? Suppose I wanted to make a film about online gambling. I film people conducting illegal online gambling. Should Congress be allowed to ban that type of film? No law means no law.
LAT further reports that:
By the arguments' end, the justices seemed to be weighing several possibilities.
One was to narrow the reach of the law to focus only on crush videos. A second would be to uphold the law as written, but make it clear that moviemakers, photographers and others had a right to challenge its use against legitimate work portraying animals. A third possibility was to rule the entire law unconstitutional because it infringed too much on the 1st Amendment.
Let's hope they pick door # 3.
But if they do, that will bring us to Citizens United v. FEC. As SCOTUSwiki reports, the issue in that case is:
Whether federal campaign finance laws apply to a critical film about Senator Hillary Clinton intended to be shown in theaters and on-demand to cable subscribers. After hearing argument, the Court ordered re-argument, to focus on the constitutionality of limiting corporations’ independent spending during campaigns for the Presidency and Congress.
If the SCOTUS holds for both Stevens and the FEC, we will have the odd situation in which political speech gets less political protection than speech about animal cruelty. Of course, today we live in the odd world in which child porn has greater constitutional protection than political speech.
Surely, that's not what the Founders intended.
