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Article: Regulating speech will not stop political corruption
- Article from:
- Dayton Daily News
- Article date:
- May 26, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2009 Dayton Daily News. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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For several decades, most of the ingenuity that liberal academics
have invested in First Amendment analysis has aimed to justify
limiting the core activity that the amendment was written to protect
-- political speech. These analyses treat free speech as not an
inherent good but as a merely instrumental good, something justified
by serving other ends -- therefore something to be balanced against,
and abridged to advance, other goods.
The good for which Zephyr Teachout would regulate speech is
combating corruption, which, as she understands it, encompasses most
of contemporary politics. A visiting law professor at Duke, writing
in the Cornell Law Review ("The Anti-Corruption Principle"), ...