Reining in Judges: The Case of Hate Speech
Danny J. Boggs · SMU Law Review · 1999
J am going to discuss the area of First Amendment free speech, as connected to the reining in of judges.My thesis is that judges are subject to legitimate efforts to rein them in only when their decisions or their new principles are not applied evenhandedly to all, such as when the nature or identity of the party seems to influence the outcome or the principles that a judge puts into effect.In fact, one area where, at one time or another, it seems as if every critic or every interest group has wished to rein in judges is the area of free speech.One commentator, Michael Kent Curtis,' posed it thusly, that Patrick Buchanan complains that the Supreme Court has protected "criminals, atheists, homosexuals, flag burners ... and pornographers, ' ' while Professor Catharine MacKinnon and critics on the Left attack them because they protect "Nazis, Klansmen, and pornographers.'' 3 At the same time, the same general principles enforced by judges have protected the speech of advocates of integration, opponents of the war in Vietnam, and political radicals.I would take as a lesson that this is one area where judges have indeed stood up for neutral principles and that it has largely been the critics and, most recently,