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Why the Marketplace of Ideas Needs Natural Law for Support and the Content-Neutrality Doctrine for Application

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Why the Marketplace of Ideas Needs Natural Law for Support and the Content-Neutrality Doctrine for Application A FOUNDATION FOR THE MARKETPLACE: WHY THE MARKETPLACE OF IDEAS NEEDS NATURAL LAW FOR SUPPORT AND THE CONTENT-NEUTRALITY DOCTRINE FOR APPLICATION BY EUGENE MINCHIN A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2018 1 © 2018 Eugene Minchin 2 This dissertation is dedicated to Providence Mercy. May she do justly, love mercy and walk humbly. 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank my wife, Suzanne, who has been a delight to live and work with these last four years. She has been a constant source of grace, encouragement and stability. I would also like to thank Clay Calvert; this project would have never happened without his keen oversight. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................................................................4 ABSTRACT .....................................................................................................................................7 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................8 2 LITERATURE REVIEW .......................................................................................................26 Introduction to Chapter 2 ........................................................................................................26 Natural Law ............................................................................................................................26 The Marketplace of Ideas Theory ...........................................................................................45 The Content-Neutrality Doctrine ............................................................................................66 3 POSITIVISM, VALUE AND TRUTH ..................................................................................86 Introduction to Chapter 3 ........................................................................................................86 Positivism and its Permutations ..............................................................................................86 Value and the Objective Turn .................................................................................................97 Empiricism and Scientism ...............................................................................................99 Rights Prioritization .......................................................................................................104 Truth .....................................................................................................................................108 4 TETHERING PHILOSOPHY TO DOCTRINE ..................................................................119 Introduction to Chapter 4 ......................................................................................................119 R1: How does the Natural Law View of Truth Inform Freedom of Expression as Envisioned in the Marketplace of Ideas? ..........................................................................120 Unlike Natural Law, Positivism does not Provide an Ontological Means to Assume Truth is Discoverable Because it does not Assume Rationality. ...............................121 Positivism Provides No Basis for Caring What the Truth is. ........................................124 Truth as consensus/instrumentality ........................................................................125 Truth as irrelevance ................................................................................................128 Distinction between Ontological Skepticism and Epistemological Humility ...............130 Judicial Recognition of Objective Truth .......................................................................132 R2: What Role do Value Judgments Play in Judicial Analyses Generally and the Freedom of Expression in Particular? ...............................................................................141 Complete Neutrality is Philosophically Impossible ......................................................142 Complete Neutrality is Practically Impossible ..............................................................146 Empiricism .............................................................................................................153 Harm principle ........................................................................................................156 Caprice and Power Rush to Fill the Void ......................................................................159 5 R3: When contrasted with positivist modes of legal reasoning, how does a natural law- informed approach affect the application of the content-neutrality doctrine in First Amendment jurisprudence? ..............................................................................................162 5 CONCLUSION.....................................................................................................................171 APPENDIX A IMPORTANT CASES..........................................................................................................182 B GLOSSARY .........................................................................................................................186 LIST OF REFERENCES .............................................................................................................190 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................................213 6 Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy A FOUNDATION FOR THE MARKETPLACE: WHY THE MARKETPLACE OF IDEAS NEEDS NATURAL LAW FOR SUPPORT AND THE CONTENT-NEUTRALITY DOCTRINE FOR APPLICATION By Eugene Minchin December 2018 Chair: Clay Calvert Major: Mass Communication This work examines the philosophical foundations that undergird the most prominent justification for free speech: the marketplace of ideas. Although first imported into constitutional jurisprudence nearly a century ago by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., the marketplace of ideas theory currently rests on a tenuous foundation of positivism, a worldview that divorces law from metaphysics. This dissertation acknowledges the value the marketplace of ideas provides to constitutional law yet contends that positivism provides an inadequate basis for supporting the theory. Instead of positivism, this work argues, the philosophy of natural law provides a significantly more stable foundation both for the marketplace truth-seeking function and the content-neutrality doctrine that applies it. 7 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION In December 2015, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decided that Simon Tam could call1 his rock band “The Slants.”2 The decision came after a six-year legal battle in which Tam, an Oregonian of Asian ancestry, fought the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) for the right to register a trademark for his group that, in the eyes of the PTO, disparaged Asians.3 The issue before the court involved competing rights: the First Amendment right of free expression4 against the Lanham Act’s right to not be disparaged or offended.5 The statutory language under consideration stated: 1 Strictly speaking, Tam and his band could call themselves whatever they wished. The ruling in this case dealt with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board’s interpretation of the Lanham Act, which prohibited the band from trademarking its name. This prohibition precluded the band members from attaining registration’s accompanying intellectual property rights, such as legal enforcement of the band’s brand within the marketplace. See In re Tam, 808 F.3d 1321,1328–29 (Fed. Cir. 2015) (identifying a comprehensive list of trademark-holders’ benefits). 2 Id. at 1358. 3 The PTO provided a plethora of linguistic and etymological evidence to suggest that the term, referring to the eye shape of Eastern Asians, featured “a long history of being used to deride and mock a physical feature” of people of Asian ancestry. Id. at 1331. 4 The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides, in relevant part, that “Congress shall make no law . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” U.S. CONST. amend. I. The Free Speech and Free Press Clauses were incorporated more than ninety years ago through the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause as fundamental liberties to apply to local and state government entities and officials. See Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652, 666 (1925) (explaining that “[f]reedom of speech and of the press—which are protected by the First Amendment from abridgment by Congress—are among the fundamental personal rights and liberties protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment from impairment by the States”). 5 15 U.S.C. ch. 22 (2016). The purpose of the Lanham Act, which was passed by Congress in 1946, is to advance two trademark-related goals: First, the purpose of the Lanham Act is to protect the public so it may be confident that, in purchasing a product bearing a particular trademark which it favorably knows, it will get the product which it asks for and wants to get. Second, the Lanham Act ensures that a markholder can protect his investment from misappropriation by pirates and cheats. By applying a trademark to goods produced by one other than the trademark’s owner,
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