Academia, Constitutional Law, Free Speech

Georgetown Publishes Turley Free Speech Work

The Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy has published my latest law review publication titled “The Right to Rage: Free Speech and Rage Rhetoric in American Political Discourse,” 21 Geo. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 481. The work explores rage rhetoric and some of the areas addressed in my forthcoming book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage. 

Here is the description from the introduction of the article:

This article explores the treatment and value of rage rhetoric. It will challenge the continuing hold of functionalist rationales, including the Court’s view that some speech can be more susceptible to criminalization than others because it is more “virulent” or has a greater influence toward criminal conduct. These underlying rationales can be traced back to early seditious libel cases. This article explores how rage rhetoric has been treated historically and legally, including recent efforts to criminalize “toxic ideologies.” The article briefly explores our history of rage rhetoric in the English and colonial periods, including defining moments in United States history like the Boston Tea Party. It then explores how rage rhetoric has been addressed by the courts from the eighteenth to twenty-first centuries. The article looks at the rationales applied by courts in criminalizing rageful or radical rhetoric within First Amendment jurisprudence. Many of these decisions continue limiting principles articulated in early English law by figures such as William Blackstone. The residual or lingering elements of those views continue to be expressed in judicial opinions. Finally, the article explores how the January 6th riot revived those residual elements in calls for new legislation and prosecutions.

I wish to thank all of the law students at Georgetown who helped prepare this law review for publication.

29 thoughts on “Georgetown Publishes Turley Free Speech Work”

  1. In the spirit of Professor Turley’s latest articles and forthcoming book, I present the following scene from the 1976 motion picture “Network,” with screenplay by the great Paddy Chayefsky, superb direction by Sidney Lumet, and a brilliant performance by Peter Finch (among other great acting performances). It’s 47 years old now, but like many a great work of art still rings true today:

  2. “The Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy has published . . .”

    Congratulations.

  3. Criticize a judge and get barred. Our judiciary is The Most Evil Enemy we have ever faced. They steal and betray and remove our rights with impunity while America sleeps. Jon, PLEASE, do something.

  4. There is only one reason for removing Trump from the ballot in Colorado, and that’s because they think the people will vote for him.

    So the Colorado Supreme Court voted to deny the right of the citizens of their state to vote as they see fit.

    Someone explain to me how that is not tyranny.

    1. This is meaningless. CO stayed there own decision essentially until well after the primary is over.

      This is virtue signally and headline grabbing with no actual effect.

      Colorado actually did NOTHING. They published an opinion that huffs and puffs but has no actual effect.

      They engaged in partisanship and nonsense not tyranny.

      They embarrassed themselves and their state.

      While I did not envision this specific decision, I did watch the Federalist debate on the issue. The Federal Judge arguing against this made a huge point at the start. He said that very few judges – state or federal would be likely to actually rule against Trump.

      It is incredibly difficult to get judges to rule against the status quo. It is especially hard when there is no clear harm.

      He predicted that Most judges would rule for Trump – and that while there were better and worse reasons to do so they would not cvare much about the reason – just getting the case out of their court. That if the case got to SCOTUS, that Roberts would dismiss this as a political not legal or constitutional question, and the domain of congress regardless.

      This Colorado panel has found a way to rule against Trump – While ruling for him.

      It is virtue signally nothing more.

      1. “Disqualification under Section 3 of 14th Amendment requires federal criminal conviction—with evidence beyond reasonable doubt, unanimous jury, and conviction upheld on appeal—for rebellion or insurrection under 18 U.S.C. § 2383.

        Anything short is illegal.

        And very dangerous.”

        🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸
        @mrddmia

  6. @Turley,
    What’s interesting is that just before reading your blog, I read an article about a Palestinian student who got arrested for protesting at UofC.
    Seems that today’s students need to learn that the heckler’s veto isn’t free speech and that while you wish to be heard, the other party (administration) may not want to hear your ill informed rhetoric.
    Of course the same is true that these students don’t want to learn the actual history or that Hamas is the cause for all of this heartache.

    Those who are Jewish and are progressive liberals… you need to pick new friends.
    I suggest you go back and talk to your more conservative Jewish friends who are either independents or Republicans.

    -G

  8. The history of free speech early in our Republic was a seesaw motion. It hit an extreme of govt. regulation with Adam’s Alien & Sedition Act. Jefferson swung to the opposite extreme, unrestrained ad hominem infowarfare, which led to the disastrous Hamilton-Burr duel. The nation, repulsed by the killing of Hamilton, drew back from the Jeffersonian extreme by implementing defamation court as a more humane and orderly deterrent to character assassination than pistol dueling.

    The Sullivan vs. NYT decision (1968) weakened that deterrent, expanding the freedom of the press to run with biased-narrative-driven falsehoods. This new “speech freedom” is exemplified by the push-poll that was used by “W”‘s primary operatives to torpedo John McCain in South Carolina (suggesting he had fathered an illegitimate biracial daughter). More recently, it witnessed a savvy group of Shiite Iraqis dupe “W” into deposing their arch enemy, Saddam Hussein, at an enormous cost of blood and treasure lasting 8 years.

    The freedom to dupe is now part and parcel of our political culture. The question is, how many more colossal blunders will our country make blinded temporarily by deceptive infowarfare? We keep electing incompetent Presidents, the level of professional opinion-shaping having overtaken neutral standards-based journalism.

    There are calibrated corrections we could be making to reestablish responsibility and accountability in the political infospace — for example repealing Sullivan, speeding up defamation due-process, and expanding civil torts to allow the public to sue dishonest actors for Public Frauds. These measures smartly avoid handing govt. the power of prosecution, keeping power in the hands of citizens to define the acceptable limits of free speech, and empowering citizens to deter candidates and campaigns from lying their way to winning elections. Fast-response Public Frauds Courts would allow the People to deter a Mike Morrell pushing our a laptop coverup narrative 3-weeks before an election, a Jussie Smollett from waging a theatrical infowarfare hoax, or Trump/Giuliani from claiming he lost due to massive, organized ballot fraud.

    I’ll take a look at Jonathan’s book, hoping he can balance speech freedom and veracity. I hope his book is not a roadmap for the most clever, compelling liars to dominate what was once a free society. A quick look around the globe indicates this is a common occurrence in a democracy when the People lose the ability to thwart deceptive infowarfare — whether the liars are already leading govt. or aspiring to.

    2. I would suggest reading “Girls lean back everywhere”
      https://www.amazon.com/Girls-Lean-Back-Everywhere-Obscenity/dp/0679743413

      While the route to free speech has had setbacks – you noted Adam’s alien & sedition act which lasted all of 5 minutes and was not enforced, which even Adams knew was unconstitutional, but we have had innumerable road blocks – the conviction of Eugene Debbs, MacCarthy and HUAC and now this nonsense from the left.

      Garcia fundimentally deals with the obscenity aspects of first amendment history.
      Regardless the point that his hundreds of pages makes is that with setbacks progress has been towards greater free speech not less.

      Hopefully the left today will be remebered much as Sen. MacCarthy and the blacklists are – as the excorable tyrants that they are.

      Mill demonstrated 2 centuries ago, that unfettered free speech is a necescity for the improvement int he human condition and good government.

      Nothing has changed.

      One of the many problems with restricting speech – is who decides. The wisest people of nearly every generation have been clear – that is a task that is beyond them.

      Most of us have had an object lesson in that problem with Covid, as well as the Biden laptop.

      We were told many things by purported experts – atleast some of which were sincere. They were severally wrong.
      Today most of us look with pity on the few who are still out in public wearing cloth masks.

      Massive amounts of power were used to censor those in disagreement with the alleged truth. Fortunately – though successfull in slowing the spread of heterodox information they did not have the power to stop it. Today the FACT that we know that the alleged experts were wrong – and in many cases were lying, is only the case because their power to supress was not infinite.

      We also have the Biden story. You can choose to beleive the evidence against The Biden’s is not damning. But only a few left wing nuts beleive the conduct of the Bidens was laudable, moral and ethical.

      Dennis, Svelaz and others repeatedly say that the Biden’s conduct was legal. We can disagree, but is that the standard ?

      Do we want someone as president whose conduct has been just inside the law – but is otherwise immoral and unethical ?

      Who is actually defending the conduct of the Biden’s ?

      Who is TODAY saying that Joe has been truthful about his conduct and that of his family ?
      Who is saying that Pres. Trump was Wrong to ask Zelensky to look into the conduct of the Biden’s in Ukraine ?

      We were told in 2019 that you can not investigate a political rival – those who said that in 2019 – where are they regarding the Biden’s political investigations of their enemies ?

      Democrats impeached a sitting president for looking to investigate an unarguably immoral and unethical former vice president.

      The media, social media, government, Biden, Democrats all conspired to censor the truth about the Biden’s
      They were successful enough to eek out an election victory.

      These are the people that you think should be in charge of deciding what can be said and what can not ?

  10. And Georgetown medical students are posting vile antisemitic caca on Twitter–oh, I mean X. Really, free speech is one thing, but for them to say they don’t want to treat Jewish patients is another. Shame shame. Now I know how German Jews felt in the 1930s albeit like many today, they really didn’t think the worse would happen. That it would blow over. It won’t this time. Never again is everyday.

  11. Congratulations on the completion of your latest endeavor. I’m sure it feels like a Christmas gift to have this work of love, finished and available for all.

  12. Funny, when I read the title of this post I assumed that Georgetown was publishing something that lacked input from the professor; Turley free! Congratulations professor!

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