11 quotes
An important assumption underlying our commitment to freedom of expression is that truth is a process, not a product.
Shouting Fire: Civil liberties in a Turbulent Age (2002)
Rights come from human experience, particularly experiences with injustice… In a word, rights come from wrongs.
Shouting Fire: Civil liberties in a Turbulent Age (2002)
If there can be agreement that certain rights are essential to reduce the chances of perfect injustice, that constitutes the beginning of a solid theory of rights.
Shouting Fire: Civil liberties in a Turbulent Age (2002)
But rights are not, as Justice Robert Jackson once reminded us, like a limited railroad ticket: good for this train at this day only. They are designed for all people and for an enduring period of time.
Shouting Fire: Civil liberties in a Turbulent Age (2002)
But ‘group rights’ is an oxymoron. Groups, especially those with increasing political power, have interests and agendas, but they may not implement them by ignoring the rights of individuals, especially those within these groups who are disempowered and despised.
Shouting Fire: Civil liberties in a Turbulent Age (2002)
For those who believe in the inerrancy and absoluteness of natural law, both sides cannot be right. But the reality is that there may indeed be both a right to life and a right to choose, just as there may be a right to life and a right of individual or societal self-defense.
Shouting Fire: Civil liberties in a Turbulent Age (2002)
Students throughout the totalitarian world risk life and limb for freedom of expression, many American college students are demanding that big brother restrict their freedom of speech on campus. This demand for enhanced censorship is not emanating only from the usual corner – the know-nothing fundamentalist right – it is coming from the radical, and increasingly not-so-radical left as well.
Shouting Fire: Civil liberties in a Turbulent Age (2002)
The Meares-Kahan essay begins with a historical error. The rights about which they speak did not grow exclusively out of an effort to remedy institutionalized racism. Rights do have histories, and the right of every American to be secure against unlawful police intrusion grew out of a long history of governmental abuse against disempowered people of all backgrounds.
Shouting Fire: Civil liberties in a Turbulent Age (2002)
I began with the premise that, deep down, everybody wants to censor something. Human beings, no matter how committed to the principles of free speech, have deep-seated distrust of the open marketplace of ideas, especially when they themselves—or the groups to which they belong—are ‘victims’ of the excesses of free speech.
Shouting Fire: Civil liberties in a Turbulent Age (2002)
I believe that experience demonstrates that a democratic society that recognizes and enforces these basic rights—uncensored expression, freedom of conscience, due process, democracy, and equal protection of the laws—is preferable to a society that does not. That is my case for rights. That is why I have a strong preference for rights.
Shouting Fire: Civil liberties in a Turbulent Age (2002)
Our First Amendment expresses a far different calculus for regulating speech than for regulating nonexpressive conduct and that is as it should be. The right to swing your fist should end at the tip of my nose, but your right to express your ideas should not necessarily end at the lobes of my ears."
Shouting Fire: Civil liberties in a Turbulent Age (2002)