Are you an absolutist or a relativist? What Nat Hentoff and Robert Bork have to tell us about freedom of speech and expression.

1. First Amendment
Are you an absolutist
or a relativist?

2. Nat Hentoff: Absolutist
• Northeastern
graduate

3. Nat Hentoff: Absolutist
• Northeastern
graduate
• Wrote liner notes for
John Coltrane and
Bob Dylan albums

4. Nat Hentoff: Absolutist
• Northeastern
graduate
• Wrote liner notes for
John Coltrane and
Bob Dylan albums
• First Amendment
views formed by
getting kicked off the
Northeastern News

5. Robert Bork: Relativist
• Served Richard Nixon

6. Robert Bork: Relativist
• Served Richard Nixon
• Failed Supreme Court
nominee

7. Robert Bork: Relativist
• Served Richard Nixon
• Failed Supreme Court
nominee
• Blames liberal judges
for protecting
“vulgarity and
obscenity”

8. Understanding
“make no law”
• Hentoff: Any restriction on speech, even
libel law, violates the First Amendment

9. Understanding
“make no law”
• Bork: The First Amendment was meant to
protect political speech, not indecency and
violence

10. Understanding
“make no law”
• Hentoff: Any restriction on speech, even
libel law, violates the First Amendment
• Bork: The First Amendment was meant to
protect political speech, not indecency and
violence

11. Hentoff on obscenity
• Founders were
unconcerned

12. Hentoff on obscenity
• Founders were
unconcerned
• Supreme Court didn’t
mention until 1957

13. Hentoff on obscenity
• Founders were
unconcerned
• Supreme Court didn’t
mention until 1957
• Brennan (right), in
Roth, introduced
social value

14. Lenny Bruce
• A satirist with a dirty
mouth

15. Lenny Bruce
• A satirist with a dirty
mouth
• How do you define
social value?

16. Lenny Bruce
• A satirist with a dirty
mouth
• How do you define
social value?
• Won on appeal,
but it was too late

17. Bork on obscenity
• Criticizes Snoop Dogg,
Nine Inch Nails

18. Bork on obscenity
• Criticizes Snoop Dogg,
Nine Inch Nails
• Driven by aesthetic as
well as legal
judgments

19. Bork on obscenity
• Criticizes Snoop Dogg,
Nine Inch Nails
• Driven by aesthetic as
well as legal
judgments
• Hentoff may be wrong
— Chaplinsky,
Near v. Minnesota

20. Hentoff versus Bork
• Protection of political ideas versus threat of
censorship

21. Hentoff versus Bork
• Protection of political ideas versus threat of
censorship
• A loophole for censors versus a loophole
for pornographers

22. Hentoff versus Bork
• Protection of political ideas versus threat of
censorship
• A loophole for censors versus a loophole
for pornographers
• Minority rights versus majority rule