Violent Video Games and Constitutional Madness

The Supreme Court continued its flight into First Amendment madness yesterday when it held that retailers had a First Amendment right to sell or rent violent video games to minors. Justice Scalia's majority opinion maintained that categories of unprotected speech such as this could only be justified if they are "historically unprotected" or meet a compelling state interest test. In this respect the Court continues its unprecedented foray in United States v. Stevens where the Court invented the same approach in the process of invalidating a statute proscribing depictions of animal cruelty. Prior to that, it is clear that the Court's categories of unprotected speech were created by balancing the interests in free speech against order, reputation, intellectual property and the like. Last year in Stevens, the Court announced without a scintilla of historical support that this process was "dangerous."

This approach matches the interpretive approach of none of the justices who signed the opinion. Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan do not confine themselves to historical approaches in other areas of the Constitution or even in other pockets of free speech interpretation. Even Scalia has purported to be bound by the original understanding of the Constitution, but the historic test he employs calls for a long historic tradition that may or may not stretch back to the framers. Moreover, it is doubtful that any of the unprotected categories as now defined match the understanding of the framers. Scalia suggests for reasons he does not disclose that it is permissible to make changes within unprotected categories without a historical basis, but not to create new categories of unprotected speech (despite our history of doing so).

Without a justification in hand for the historical test, the Justices turn to the impossibly high standards of the compelling state interest test. This is an appropriate test for those with a First Amendment fetish and those who are blind First Amendment cheerleaders, so blind that they cannot distinguish between violent video games for children and literary, artistic, scientific, or political speech. In applying the test, the Justices think there is not a sufficient showing of harm despite the conclusions of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychology, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Medical Association.

Justice Clark once said that there is no war between the Constitution and common sense. Well the Supreme Court has declared such a war and there is no end in sight.

Comments

[Steve Shiffrin]

Frank
Thanks for commenting. I agree that the agreement of liberals and those identified as conservatives nurtures an image of balance, objectivity, and nonpartisanship. In the case of free speech, the media is also prepared to applaud virtually any vindication of free speech rights (campaign finance atttracts less media uniformity in my view because the media does not think money is speech). Thanks also for the tip on the novel.

[Frank Pasquale]

Absolutely right. There is a certain political genius to First Amendment fundamentalism: by alternately offending social conservatives and economic progressives, the court assiduously cultivates its reputation for balance, objectivity, and nonpartisanship. Of course, such a maneuver is typical of the most curdled and cynical politics. It's the same spirit that motivates the mainstream media to applaud virtually any "bipartisan" initiative, however destructive (war) or cruel (benefit cuts for the poorest). One of the more ingenious turns of Gary Shteyngart's Supersad True Love Story (a novel that imagines exactly what happens to childhood under the assault of a constant barrage of salacious images) was to portray a totalitarian America under the tutelage of one, united, "Bipartisan Party."