First Amendment primer covers free expression and repression
Anthony Lewis's "law school between covers" is among a handful of recent biographies of inanimate objects and ideas. As such, Lewis makes an ideal Boswell for the First Amendment and "the American commitment to freedom of speech and press." His qualifications are as a longtime liberal on The
This expertise has produced a dandy primer, on several counts. His Harvard colleagues may find "Freedom for the Thought That We Hate" a pop summation of their basic lectures, but Lewis is surely right that lay Americans need a concise introduction to the value of our freedom of expression, for it has always soared on fragile wings. The Bush administration's attempts to squelch press coverage of its antiterrorist (and warrantless) wiretapping of international phone calls, discussed by Lewis, is only the latest in a line of executive mischief-making with the First Amendment. By historic standards, President Bush's efforts are wan.
The Sedition Act of 1798 criminalized "false, scandalous and malicious" criticism of President John Adams and the Congress. Requiring criticism to be "false" was a fig leaf hiding repressive intent, Lewis writes, as some critics were prosecuted for their opinions - which by definition can't be proven true. Fast-forward to the early 20th century, and we have President Woodrow Wilson engineering laws to ban Americans from voicing alleged disloyalty to the government. Four radicals, urging a strike to protest Wilson's sending troops to Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution, received 15- and 20-year sentences. They served just a fraction of that time after agreeing to repatriate to the Soviet Union (where two were fated for even ghastlier tyranny than Wilson's, perishing in Nazi and Communist purges).
In all of these cases, fear enabled the suppression of expression. Adams had the backdrop of the French Revolution's terror; Wilson, the Red Scare following World War I; Bush, 9/11. Lewis reminds readers that guarding against such abuses takes institutional safeguards, including the press, as "courts have hardly been consistent guarantors of free speech." The Sedition Act, for example, was not overturned by judges but by voters, who, partly in revulsion at it, dumped Adams in the presidential election of 1800.
But Lewis is no lemming marching blindly to any and all First Amendment supports. He thinks the courts erred in making public figures like movie stars meet the strict standards for proving libel that politicians face. He also thinks that "we should be able to punish speech that urges terrorist violence to an audience some of whose members are ready to act on the urging." His love of the amendment clearly flows from love of country, and he lauds the United States as the first and foremost nation in protecting speech.
One puzzles over some of Lewis's assertions. Does New York Times v. Sullivan, the pivotal 1964 decision curbing libel actions, really deserve as much credit for spurring media coverage of the civil rights movement as he accords it? And when former attorney general John Ashcroft declared that civil libertarians who criticized government secrecy were aiding terrorists, he drew more criticism than Lewis remembers. Still, these doubts subtract little from the value of this biography.
Contact Rich Barlow at barlow81@gmail.com. 