Alabama Law Scholarly Commons Articles Faculty Scholarship 1991 Images of the Outsider in American Law and Culture: Can Free Expression Remedy Systemic Social Ills Richard Delgado University of Alabama - School of Law,
[email protected] Jean Stefancic University of Alabama - School of Law,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.ua.edu/fac_articles Recommended Citation Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic, Images of the Outsider in American Law and Culture: Can Free Expression Remedy Systemic Social Ills, 77 Cornell L. Rev. 1258 (1991). Available at: https://scholarship.law.ua.edu/fac_articles/569 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at Alabama Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles by an authorized administrator of Alabama Law Scholarly Commons. IMAGES OF THE OUTSIDER IN AMERICAN LAW AND CULTURE: CAN FREE EXPRESSION REMEDY SYSTEMIC SOCIAL ILLS? Richard Delgado t &Jean Stefancic tt INTRODUCTION Conventional First Amendment doctrine is beginning to show signs of strain. Outsider groups and women argue that free speech law inadequately protects them against certain types of harm.' Fur- ther, on a theoretical level, some scholars are questioning whether free expression can perform the lofty functions of community-build- ing and consensus-formation that society assigns to it.2 We believe that in both situations the source of the difficulty is the same: failure to take account of the ways language and expres- sion work.3 The results of this failure are more glaring in some ar- eas than others. Much as Newtonian physics enabled us to explain the phenomena of daily life but required modification to address the larger scale, First Amendment theory will need revision to deal with issues lying at its farthest reaches.