Document Type

Working Paper

Publication Date

6-27-2012

SSRN Discipline

Legal Scholarship Network; PSN Subject Matter eJournals; Social Insurance Research Network; Law School Research Papers - Legal Studies; Law & Society eJournals; Law & Society: Public Law eJournals; LSN Subject Matter eJournals; Constitutional Law, Jurisprudence & Legal Philosophy eJournals; Political Institutions eJournals; Political Science Network

Abstract

Liberal defenders of the current regime of lax regulation of hate speech such as the ACLU often assert that it is vital to protect the speech we hate just as much as the speech we love The system of free speech must be a seamless web Relaxing First Amendment vigilance for one type of speech such as racist hate speech will just lead to another exception then another and soon we will be left with little or no freedom of speech at all This article considers this objection to antihate speech rules and regulations which it terms First Amendment totalism and finds that it contravenes a basic principle of our legal and governmental system namely dialogic politics

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