Kagan Says free speech is all about the Govt's motive, Backs Limits on Speech That Can ‘Harm’

CNS News ^ | 5/12/10 | Matt Cover

[reaganrevolutionin2010]

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan said the high court should be focused on ferreting out improper governmental motives when deciding First Amendment cases, arguing that the government’s reasons for restricting free speech were what mattered most and not necessarily the effect of those restrictions on speech.

Kagan, the solicitor general of the United States under President Obama, expressed that idea in her 1996 article in the University of Chicago Law Review entitled, “Private Speech, Public Purpose: The Role of Governmental Motive in First Amendment Doctrine.”

In her article, Kagan said that examination of the motives of government is the proper approach for the Supreme Court when looking at whether a law violates the First Amendment. While not denying that other concerns, such as the impact of a law, can be taken into account, Kagan argued that governmental motive is “the most important” factor.

[ETL]

From David Horowitz's
FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org
PROFILE: ELENA KAGAN

• Served as President Bill Clinton's Associate White House Counsel
• Former dean of Harvard Law School
• Sought to overturn the Solomon Amendment, a law that denies federal funding to any university that bars military recruiters from its campus
• Believes that the military should open its ranks and barracks to homosexuals, without restriction
• Was appointed U.S. Solicitor General by President Barack Obama in January 2009

As an undergraduate at Princeton, Kagan wrote a senior thesis titled

"To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933."

In the "Acknowledgments" section of her work, she specifically thanked her brother Marc, “whose involvement in radical causes led me to explore the history of American radicalism in the hope of clarifying my own political ideas.” In the body of the thesis, Kagan wrote:

"In our own times, a coherent socialist movement is nowhere to be found in the United States. Americans are more likely to speak of a golden past than of a golden future, of capitalism’s glories than of socialism’s greatness. Conformity overrides dissent; the desire to conserve has overwhelmed the urge to alter. Such a state of affairs cries out for explanation. Why, in a society by no means perfect, has a radical party never attained the status of a major political force? Why, in particular, did the socialist movement never become an alternative to the nation’s established parties?...

"Through its own internal feuding, then, the SP [Socialist Party] exhausted itself forever and further reduced labor radicalism in New York to the position of marginality and insignificance from which it has never recovered. The story is a sad but also a chastening one for those who, more than half a century after socialism’s decline, still wish to change America. Radicals have often succumbed to the devastating bane of sectarianism; it is easier, after all, to fight one’s fellows than it is to battle an entrenched and powerful foe. Yet if the history of Local New York shows anything, it is that American radicals cannot afford to become their own worst enemies. In unity lies their only hope."

Lots more on Kagan here:
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2398

[ExTexasRedhead]

Sounds like she is an admirer of Joseph Goebbels.

[Let's Roll]

Gee, and who would decide what or which speech is ‘harmful’? Would it be, uh, er, um, Kagan?

[blueyon]

enough said...Thanks for your time, bye bye!

[Pollster1]

I would argue that motive is not terribly relevant when a tyrant tramples your God-given rights. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press" seems pretty clear. Last time I checked, "no law" meant no law, and that is an interpretation that the Supreme Court should defend since the socialists and collectivists in our Congress and our White House oppose that fundamental right.

[GOPsterinMA]

As we’ve discussed, there were Jewish Nazis. Some were Admirals, Generals and highly decorated.

This swinehund would fit right in.

[Blogger]

Does this include her own speech? Her speech harms everyone’s first amendment rights so we should take her speech away.

Rights are not subjective. They either are or aren’t. She has no right to strip us of ours.

[trad_anglican]

governmental motive is “the most important” factor

It's the same old story for liberals - the end justifies the means.

What you want to have happen is more important than what actually happens? How is that consistent with the rule of law and how can someone who believes this be elevated to a lifetime position on the highest court in the land?

[GeronL]

Remember the Citizens United case??

The President can ban books, films, downloads and anything else basically if she had her way.

[Need4Truth]

When the president lies, is that speech that can harm?

[OldNavyVet]

Socialists think that governments have rights that override human rights.

Capitalists think that governments exist to responsibly protect human rights.

[a fool in paradise]

Gee, and who would decide what or which speech is ‘harmful’? Would it be, uh, er, um, Kagan?

Round up the Weather Undergound and send them to prison for treason as they should have been convicted 35 year ago.

[GailA]

Sounds like every one that the Marxist in chief has appointed so far.

AR Senator Blanche Lincoln is proudly running an ad crowing about her YES vote on Obamanationcare. AR like the rest of the US OPPOSED this crap. We might be waving bye, bye to yet another Dem.

[bert]

Her principle goal in no holocaust

[ScottinVA]

"...American radicals cannot afford to become their own worst enemies. In unity lies their only hope."

This b!tch is trouble.

[reaganrevolutionin2010]

Round up the democrat Senators who out and out LIED *to* our troops, and *about* them.

[a fool in paradise]

The New York Times served as an enemy propagandist by spinning that the abuse at Abu Ghraib was a Bush policy, that these convicts would not have been prosecuted if not for the media running the photos, and that the abuses at Abu Ghraib under US control were equal to the horrors committed there by Saddam Hussein. This is what the Arab Street took away from the event based on US press hysteria.

It lengthed the war by several years and emboldened the terrorists by justifying why they “hate” us.

[Nachum]

The list, ping

[JimRed]

Backs Limits on Speech That Can ‘Harm’

So, she stands against the lies about the Tea Party being racist and hateful? < /sarc >