Ik zie net dat het Blokk arrest bevestigd is door Cassatie, en ik zit toevallig net
een gelijkaardige First Amendment case te lezen uit 1919, Whitney v. California. Serendipity at work. In de zaak Whitney, werd ene Anita Whitney veroodeeld omdat ze een groep geholpen had die een Communistische Partij wilde starten, die, volgens de overheid het oogmerk had een revolutie tegen het gezag te ontketenen. Whitney werd uiteindelijk veroordeeld, maar Justice Brandeis' "concurrence" (hij was van mening dat de veroordeling geldig was op basis van procedurele en technisch argumenten) is the claim to fame van
deze rechtszaak en zou een grote invloed hebben op de interpretatie van vrijheid van meningsuiting in de V.S.. Mijn advisor Jane Kirtley , een hevige voorvechtster van het vrije woord kan wellicht moeilijk de oogjes droog houden bij deze passage:
Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties, and that in its government the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty. They believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile; that with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government. They recognized the risks to which all human institutions are subject. But they knew that order cannot be secured merely through fear of punishment for its infraction; that it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government; that the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies; and that the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones. Believing in the power of reason as applied through public discussion, they eschewed silence coerced by law-the argument of force in its worst form. Recognizing the occasional tyrannies of governing majorities, they amended the Constitution so that free speech and assembly should be guaranteed.
Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. To courageous, selfreliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the processes of popular government, no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present, unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. Only an emergency can justify repression. Such must be the rule if authority is to be reconciled with freedom. 5 Such, in my opinion, is the command of the Constitution. It is therefore always open to Americans to challenge a law abridging free speech and assembly by showing that there was no emergency justifying it. .....
Posted by vana0047 at November 9, 2004 11:37 AM