Читать книгу Keeping the Republic - Christine Barbour - Страница 146

Among the categories of speech the Court has ruled may be regulated is one called fighting words, words whose express purpose is to create a disturbance and incite violence in the person who hears the speech.⁴⁶ However, the Court rarely upholds legislation designed to limit fighting words unless the law is written very carefully. Consequently, it has held that threatening and provocative language is protected unless it is likely to “produce a clear and present danger of serious substantive evil that rises far above public inconvenience, annoyance, or unrest.”⁴⁷ It has also ruled that offensive language, though not protected by the First Amendment, may occasionally contain a political message, in which case constitutional protection applies.⁴⁸

fighting words speech intended to incite violence

These rulings have taken on modern-day significance in the wake of the political correctness movement that swept the country in the late 1980s and 1990s, especially on college campuses. Political correctness refers to an ideology, held primarily by some liberals, including some civil rights activists and feminists, that language shapes society in critical ways and, therefore, that racist, sexist, homophobic, or any other language that demeans any group of individuals should be silenced to minimize its social effects. An outgrowth of the political correctness movement is the adoption of speech codes on college campuses, banning speech that might be offensive to women or ethnic and other minorities. Critics of speech codes, and of political correctness in general, argue that such practices unfairly repress free speech, which should flourish on, of all places, college campuses. In 1989 and 1991, federal district court judges agreed, finding speech codes on two campuses, the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin, in violation of students’ First Amendment rights.⁴⁹ Neither school appealed. The Supreme Court spoke on a related issue in 1992 when it struck down a Minnesota “hate crime law” that prohibited activities that “arouse anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender.” The Court held that it is unconstitutional to outlaw such broad categories of speech based on its content.⁵⁰

political correctness the idea that language shapes behavior and therefore should be regulated to control its social effects

How much free speech do we need on our college campuses?