Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Dellinger on the speech cases juxtaposition

Slate Magazine:
The chief's opinion protects campaign ads financed by corporate funds in virtually every case by assuming that the ads are issue advocacy and not ads seeking election or defeat of a candidate, saying that 'we give the benefit of the doubt to speech.' Student speech gets no such favorable presumption. Indeed, the exact reverse is true: If there is any reasonable basis for the school official's characterization of the speech as advocating illegal conduct the speech can be banned. In the school context, the chief might have paraphrased his then-minutes-old campaign-finance precedent and concluded 'we give the benefit of the doubt to [suppression].'

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