Saturday, October 01, 2005
Howard reports important cases from oregon about the state free speech clause.
The facts themselves - a sex show and regulation of lap dancing, may not be crucial.
Bu the text of the decisions is important. The Oregon constitution has the same language as the indiana constitution. The difference, perhaps due to the influence of Hans Linde, is that oregon enforces its constitution. If the constitution says "you can't do that", the judges read that to mean "you can't do that" instead of some balancing test or state interest test. That's how it should work.
Cato wrote:
"Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick Liberty, without Freedom of Speech; Which is the Right of every Man, as far as by it does not hurt and controul the Right of another; and this is the only Check which it ought to suffer, the only Bounds which it ought to know."
"Of Freedom of Speech", No 15, Feb 4, 1720, in John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, I Cato's Letters: Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious 96 (reprint ed. 1971)
To the more libertarian adherents of the natural rights philosophy, freedom of speech was an "inalienable" natural right -- that is, it was not part of the package of natural rights that individuals ceded to the community in order to obtain the protections and benefits of civil society
The facts themselves - a sex show and regulation of lap dancing, may not be crucial.
Bu the text of the decisions is important. The Oregon constitution has the same language as the indiana constitution. The difference, perhaps due to the influence of Hans Linde, is that oregon enforces its constitution. If the constitution says "you can't do that", the judges read that to mean "you can't do that" instead of some balancing test or state interest test. That's how it should work.
Cato wrote:
"Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick Liberty, without Freedom of Speech; Which is the Right of every Man, as far as by it does not hurt and controul the Right of another; and this is the only Check which it ought to suffer, the only Bounds which it ought to know."
"Of Freedom of Speech", No 15, Feb 4, 1720, in John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, I Cato's Letters: Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious 96 (reprint ed. 1971)
To the more libertarian adherents of the natural rights philosophy, freedom of speech was an "inalienable" natural right -- that is, it was not part of the package of natural rights that individuals ceded to the community in order to obtain the protections and benefits of civil society
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