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Free Speech and Libertarian Myopia
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# : |
14587 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1988 |
3,494 Words |
| Author
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George Carey
George Carey is professor of government at Georgetown
University and is the editor of the Political Science
Reviewer. He is coauthor with Willmoore Kendall of Basic
Symbols of the American Political Tradition and coauthor with
Charles Hyneman of A Second Federalist. His forthcoming book
is The Federalist: Design for a Constitutional Republic. |
A WORTHY TRADITION
Freedom of Speech in America
Harry Kalven, Jr., edited by Jamie Kalven
New York: Harper and Row, 1987
698 pp., $35.00
In 1970 Harry Kalven, Jr., a noted professor of law at the University Chicago, set out to write the book he "always wanted to write," a comprehensive examination of the Supreme Court's treatment of the First Amendment freedoms of speech and association. He approached this task from an interesting perspective: The Court was, he believed, engaged in a "Socratic dialogue" with society over the meaning of freedom of speech--an "open-ended" dialogue because, as he put it, "a definitive, fully understood answer will never be reached and so the process must go on with another and yet another question being put." Moreover, he viewed this dialogue as taking place within the context of a "living" and dynamic "tradition"; a tradition that embodied the values that furnished the common ground for this dialogue. While, for Kalven, this tradition transcends the specific controversies involving speech and association, these controversies serve as constant reminders and reaffirmations of these freedoms, thereby keeping open the avenues for "critical discussion." In this context, he conceived the Court's role as that of distilling the tradition, that is, as "articulating," clarifying, and advancing its core values.
Kalven died in 1974 in the midst of this enterprise. His son, Jamie, with assistance from Professor Owen Fiss of Yale, organized and edited the materials that comprise this book. In an afterword, the younger Kalven indicates the extent of his input into the content and organization of this volume. Suffice it to say that his efforts were largely confined to rendering the materials more coherent and intelligible for the reader--no small matter, given the state of the manuscript at the time of his father's death.
Contrary to Kalven's intentions and what the title may suggest, the scope of this book is far from comprehensive. To begin with, as his son acknowledges, a "substantial part of HK's overall design remained unwritten." The areas not dealt with would include "regulation of the public forum keyed to the time, place, and manner of expression; regulation of symbolic conduct; regulation of voting and political activity; regulation of the business of communication; the newsman's privilege; the issue of access and other special problems of broadcasting." This is no small matter, since some of these
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