As Justice Holmes said …
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. on free speech & related matters: selected quotationsIntroduction by Ronald K.L. Collins
First Amendment scholar
05.21.08
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Holmes case tables
Modern free-speech jurisprudence begins with the words and wisdom of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Whatever one may make of that, it is impossible to deny. Whether Holmes was a liberal or a libertarian, a pragmatist or a nihilist, a defender of individual rights or majority will, a social Darwinist or a totalitarian, or a “Jekyll-Holmes and Hyde-Holmes” as law professor Albert Alschuler has branded him, is difficult to say without nuanced elaboration. What is easier to gauge is his enormous impact on how we — laypeople and lawyers alike — think and talk about our system of freedom of expression. This is not necessarily because of the analytical soundness of his opinions, but rather, to echo Judge Richard Posner, because of his “rhetorical skill.” That is, “Holmes was a great judge because he was a great literary artist.”
…
Mindful of all of this and more, the selection of 60 quotes offered below is submitted for the reader’s examination, duly mindful of his or her right to dissent.
Author: Eoin
Dr Eoin O'Dell is a Fellow and Associate Professor of Law at Trinity College Dublin.
Freedom of expression in the crosshairs
In the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the murder of six other people in Arizona last week, a fierce debate has broken out over the heated political rhetoric – often coarse, martial, and vitriolic – that is now distressingly commonplace in US political discourse. The specific background is a map which appeared on Sarah Palin‘s website targeting the seats of political opponents – including Rep. Giffords – in rifle-sight cross-hairs, and which has therefore focussed signficant attention on Palin’s confused response to the tragedy. Of course, politicians and pundits across the political spectrum have used such language and imagery, and the issues of principle arise in the context of the general standard of debate rather than in the context of any particular politician, pundit or party. I want in this post to set out some of the general free speech arguments that I have come across since Saturday. …
Man ‘used TV legal dramas to impersonate lawyer’ – Telegraph
Man ‘used TV legal dramas to impersonate lawyer’
A man has been accused of impersonating a lawyer in more than 50 court cases after watching TV legal dramas including ‘The Good Wife’ and ‘Boston Legal’for tips.
Tahir Malik, who has no legal training, often watched the shows and picked up what to say and how to file court motions, according to his father.. [and]fooled courts in Cook County, Illinois, for several years. … He was eventually discovered last month when a court clerk became suspicious about his behaviour and asked to see his legal credentials.
via telegraph.co.uk
An interesting use for court-room dramas, eh, Ted? But what does it say about law schools that Malik got that far?
Libel reform and the public – review of MST/INFORRM debate at Gray’s Inn – Gavin Freeguard « Inforrm’s Blog
Libel reform and the public – review of MST/INFORRM debate at Gray’s Inn – Gavin Freeguard
12 01 2011
Could libel reform have a damaging impact on the public’s access to justice? This was one of the key questions to emerge last night from ‘Libel Reform: in the public’s interest?’, a public debate organised by Gray’s Inn in association with the Media Standards Trust and INFORRM.
Chaired by Helena Kennedy, an audience of lawyers, journalists, politicians and campaigners listened to the panel range over everything from the affordability of libel claims, the difference between individual bloggers and large media organisations and whether libel is too ‘claimant friendly’, to standards in journalism, alternative dispute resolution mechanisms and the impact of the government’s libel reform bill (expected in March) on news reporting.
The summary of the event in this long post (also available here) is very interesting indeed.
Another interesting post on the issue of libel reform is Opinion: “Balancing Libel Reform” – Kevin Marsh, arguing that we must be slow to reform libel laws because, whatever journalists profess, “not all journalism is honest, well-sourced, fair-minded or in the public interest”. In similar vein, but more strongly, Paul Tweed argues that the current libel laws keep journalists honest:
The irony is that the UK broadsheets are generally regarded to be among the most credible and respected in the world, which is in no small measure due to our fair and balanced libel laws!
Review: MOBiLE CLOTH — quickly clean your iPhone and iPad screen – iPhone J.D.
The MOBiLE CLOTH is a 9 inch by 9 inch cloth made of microfiber. When you touch the cloth it instantly sticks to your fingers because of the large number of tightly woven microfiber nubs. It feels a little strange at first, almost like you are touching something that is sticky as if you are touching cotton candy. But the stickiness is simply the result of the way that the microfibers are woven, and it makes this cloth much more powerful at picking up dust than those lens cloths that I have used for years with my eyeglasses.
Does it work? Yes, amazingly well. For example, the other day I had been typing on my iPad screen using the virtual keyboard, and when I was done my screen was covered with smudges, dust, etc. It would have taken a lot of rubbing on a shirt to try to clean it off, and even using a normal lens cloth it would take a short while to get this clean. But with simply a few quick swipes of the MOBiLE CLOTH, the screen looked amazing.
via iphonejd.com
The full post is even more laudatory. The MOBiLE CLOTH sounds like a great product (even if the almost all-capital name is a bit silly).
My legal hero: Thomas More | Linda Lee | Law | guardian.co.uk
My legal hero: Thomas More
One-time lord chancellor’s principled defence of the rule of law is an ideal that all lawyers should aspire to, writes Linda Lee
Portrait of English lawyer, politician, and writer Thomas More (1478 – 1535) …
… While his legacy remains complex and academics continue to dissect his work and argue over what Thomas More wrote, thought and represented in the heady political, religious and social context of the 15th and 16th centuries, I admire him for that most fundamental of things; his passion for, and commitment to, the rule of law.
Although it has been suggested his most famous work, Utopia, is a sustained satire on the rule of law, I choose to take from it the deep affinities between the rule of law and humanism. In fact, it has been said that More was the “most human” of lawyers. …
Linda Lee has been president of the Law Society since July 2010
via guardian.co.uk
EU proposes online right ‘to be forgotten’ – Telegraph
The proposed EU rules are called “A comprehensive approach on personal
data protection in the European Union”, and suggest that an online “right
to be forgotten” and to privacy could be enshrined in criminal law.The “right to be forgotten” would give users the power to tell websites to
permanently delete all personal data held about them.
via telegraph.co.uk
This isn’t the freshest of news. On 4 November 2010, as part of a review of the EU’s data protection legal framework, the EU Commission adopted a strategic Communication on a comprehensive strategy on data protection in the European Union (COM (2010) 609). The “right to be forgotten” is one of the Communication’s proposals. It has returned to public debate at this stage as the public consultation on the proposals included in the Communication will close on 15 January 2011.
SSRN-Freedom of Speech, Support for Terrorism, and the Challenge of Global Constitutional Law
Freedom of Speech, Support for Terrorism, and the Challenge of Global Constitutional Law
by Daphne Barak-Erez (Tel Aviv University – Buchmann Faculty of Law) and David Scharia (Counter Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate UN Security Council)
forthcoming Harvard National Security Journal, Vol. 2, 2011; via SSRN
Abstract:
In the recent case of Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, [here] the Supreme court of the United States ruled that a criminal prohibition on advocacy carried out in coordination with, or at the direction of, a foreign terrorist organization is constitutionally permissible: it is not tantamount to an unconstitutional infringement of freedom of speech.
This Article aims to understand both the decision itself and its implications in the context of the global effort to define the limits of speech that aims to support or promote terrorism. More specifically, the Article compares the European approach, which focuses on whether the content of the speech tends to support terrorism, with the U.S. approach, which focuses on criminalizing speakers who have links to terrorist organizations. Both approaches are evaluated against the background of the adoption of Resolution 1624 by the United Nations Security Council in 2005, which called on states to prohibit by law incitement to commit terrorist acts.