Equality (Malik Speaking)
				Source		MAIN PATH: Fred
				Fred

I agree with Vera. We have got to realize that the constitution does more than guarantee free speech; and free speech doesn't automatically win out over all other considerations. I think some liberals have made free speech into a near absolute value without looking at the harm that speech can do in concrete situations.

Cass Sunstein has made a good argument for protecting the First Amendment right to free expression and at the same time protecting the equality guaranteed by the fourteenth Amendment. I want to summarize his view:

• The Fourteenth Amendment was adopted in 1868 to eliminate a system of racial castes in the United States. It embodies an "anticaste principle." An anticaste principle is designed to stop us from turning "morally irrelevant differences" into systemic social disadvantages. Race and sex are good examples of morally irrelevant differences.
• Disadvantages of this sort can result in very important inequalities in areas such as "poverty, education, health, political power, employment, susceptibility to violence and crime, and so forth."
• Our government could justify narrow restrictions on speech "by claiming that the interest in equality is sufficiently neutral and weighty to support those restrictions."

This is a view that attempts to balance two very important constitutional values without sacrificing either one. It is exactly what we need to prevent the harm done by hate speech, and it is constitutional.

I am not sure whether the speech code here at the university could be justified by this argument. Sunstein believes that it could not be. But my point is that a narrower code could be justified in this way without sacrificing constitutional values.

Reference: See Cass Sunstein's article, "Words, Conduct, Caste" in The Price We Pay. The quotations at taken from p. 266-268.

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