The Hate Speech Case: A Pyrrhic Victory for Freedom of Speech?
G. Sidney Buchanan · bepress Legal Repository · 1992
Viewed superficially, the Supreme Court's recent "hate speech" decision in RA.V. v. City of St. Paul,' may appear to constitute a victory for freedom of speech.Viewed more probingly, RA.V. sends forth decidedly mixed signals and may, on balance, damage free speech values.This curious, even paradoxical, result is caused by the reasoning contained in Justice Scalia's majority opinion for the Court. 2 If the Court applies Scalia's reasoning in subsequent hate speech cases, free speech values may suffer.This Article explores the ornate conceptual castle that Scalia has constructed in his majority opinion in RA.V.After setting forth the facts in RA.V and the holding of the Court, this Article contends that Scalia's opinion errs in two important ways.First, the opinion restricts unduly the power of government to regulate the several categories of speech that the Court has characterized as wholly unprotected