Better in their words…

The encroachment onto the First Amendment right to “freedom of expression” by the ‘vocal opposition’ is something that should concern everyone. Especially true freedom loving people. I don’t like everyone’s speech content either, but I am more confident that the truth will prevail than I am about wanting to protect my ears and the ears of everyone else.
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An essential freedom-of-speech paradigm was established in 1949 by the Supreme Court in Terminiello v. Chicago. In that case a vitriolic, racist speaker spoke to an auditorium packed with supporters. Outside the auditorium was what was described as “ ‘a surging, howling mob hurling epithets’ at those who would enter and ‘tried to tear their clothes off.’ ” The police blamed the mob’s action on the speaker, Arthur Terminiello, a Catholic priest under suspension by his bishop. He was convicted of disturbing the peace and fined.

The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, reversed the conviction and ruled that Terminiello’s speech was protected by the First Amendment. The court said that the police, instead of taking action against the speaker, should have protected him and controlled the crowd, including making arrests if necessary. University of Chicago law professor Harry Kalven Jr. would later coin the term “heckler’s veto” to describe what would have happened had the court decided otherwise. First Amendment rights could be “vetoed” by others who create a public disturbance that forces the silencing of the speaker.

Sony ’s recent crisis over the film “The Interview”—along with the domestic political correctness and anti-hate speech movements, various international agreements and globalization itself—is leading the country precisely toward a heckler’s veto.

Protesters have silenced speakers on several occasions this year, sometimes with the law’s support. In February a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a California high school’s decision to prohibit students from wearing American-flag T-shirts on Cinco de Mayo “to avert violence.” In August a panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ejection of an anti-Islam Christian group from an Arab festival in Dearborn, Mich., on the theory that the group’s speech would incite festivalgoers to violence. (In October the full court agreed to reconsider the decision.)

In December protesters against the non-indictment of a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., stormed into an auditorium at the University of California, Berkeley, and shut down a speech by Internet entrepreneur Peter Thiel . And during the past academic year, protesters caused the cancellation of commencement addresses by former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at Rutgers University, and International Monetary Fund Director Christine Lagarde at Smith College.

There is growing support, including among academics and racial and religious advocacy groups, that what they define as hate speech like Terminiello’s is simply outside the First Amendment’s protection. Law professors have concocted influential concepts like “outsider jurisprudence,” “critical race theory,” “critical feminist theory, and “storytelling” theory to define some kinds of politically incorrect speech as not speech at all, but “mechanisms of subordination.”

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (which the U.S. Senate ratified, but with several “reservations” that may have rendered it toothless for now) nominally protects free expression, but requires state parties to prohibit “any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination.” The Organization of the Islamic Conference has repeatedly sponsored resolutions in the U.N. Human Rights Commission against the “defamation of religion.”

Meanwhile, globalization itself poses challenges.

In Terminiello, the site of the speech was a rented hall in Chicago. In the case of “The Interview,” the “speaker” is Sony Pictures, a subsidiary of the Japanese technology and media conglomerate. The “places” of speech were mostly intended to be big theater chains like AMC Theatres. AMC is a subsidiary of another foreign company, the Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group. The movie—the “speech” in this case—satirizes a third country, North Korea.

The project is informed by national interests and international relations that conflict with each other and with those of the U.S. Internal Sony emails released by hackers that the U.S. government has said were working for North Korea, show that executives in Tokyo, including the CEO of Sony Corp., were concerned about the film’s potential for inflaming relations between Japan and North Korea, and made changes to tone it down. No matter; North Korea declared that to allow the production and distribution of the movie was an “act of war” and threatened attacks against targets in the U.S.

China has used its muscle to squelch free speech in the U.S. sometimes involving Falun Gong—a religious group that Beijing has condemned and whose members have been brutally persecuted in China. Several years ago Falun Gong had an agreement to rent space for exhibits at a major Los Angeles hotel. They complained that the Chinese government pressured the hotel to end its agreement. Chinese consulates in the U.S. also have pressured local Chinese New Year’s Day committees to prevent Falun Gong from participating in Chinese New Year’s parades in cities including Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York. With globalization, the reach of foreign government influence on free expression will multiply, and the free expression that Americans enjoy will wither.

It is rare for movies released by major studios to be shut down by opposition. Ironically, one example also involved Korea—the film “Inchon,” a Hollywood production with a stellar cast and crew. The film, at its pre-release première at Washington’s Kennedy Center, was greeted by picketers who had been alerted that it had been financed largely by Rev. Sun Myung Moon, whose Unification Church was accused of being a coercive cult.

The film was released by MGM/UA in 1982, and again drew anti-Unification Church pickets in Los Angeles. With public attention focused on Unification Church involvement in the film rather than, as hoped by the producers, the actual battle of Inchon in 1950, the film was swiftly withdrawn at the request of the Unification Church. It was never shown again in theaters and was never released on videocassette or DVD.

Do police have a duty to protect the film exhibitors and viewers of “The Interview,” or of similar such films in the future? Fear of retaliation already has inhibited speech about Muhammad and other Islam-related matters—Iran’s 1989 fatwa calling for the assassination of Salman Rushdie, author of “The Satanic Verses,” being the most well known. Add to that now speech about North Korea.

Mr. Fisher is a partner in the Los Angeles law firm of Fleishman & Fisher. He has litigated free-speech cases in state and federal courts including the Supreme Court, and has served as vice chairman of the American Bar Association First Amendment Committee.

via Barry A. Fisher: Free Speech’s Shrinking Circle of Friends – WSJ.