Hastings Communications and Entertainment Law Journal Volume 20 | Number 2 Article 2 1-1-1997 The Quality of First Amendment Speech Randall P. Bezanson Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/ hastings_comm_ent_law_journal Part of the Communications Law Commons, Entertainment, Arts, and Sports Law Commons, and the Intellectual Property Law Commons Recommended Citation Randall P. Bezanson, The Quality of First Amendment Speech, 20 Hastings Comm. & Ent. L.J. 275 (1997). Available at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hastings_comm_ent_law_journal/vol20/iss2/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Hastings Communications and Entertainment Law Journal by an authorized editor of UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Quality of First Amendment Speecht by RANDALL P. BEZANSON ° I. Quality as Subject Matter ........................................................ 281 II. Quality as Meaning ................................................................... 286 A. Idiosyncratic Meaning ..................... I................................. 287 B. Rules Governing Meaning ..................... 289 1. Received Meaning ........................................................ 290 2. Intended Meaning ......................................................... 293 3. Textual Meaning ........................................................... 294 C. Complex Meaning .............................................................. 295 D. The Meaning of Speech and the Meaning of Meaning ......................... 298 III. Quality as Communication ...................................................... 300 A. Inadvertent Falsehood ....................................................... 303 B. Attempted Expression ........................ 305 C. The Impact of the Medium ............................................... 307 D . Conclusion ........................................................................... 314 IV. Quality as Technique ................................................................ 315 A . Introduction ........................................................................ 315 1. Technique as Proficiency ............................................. 316 2. Technique as Genre ...................................................... 318 B. The Defamation and Product Disparagement Cases ......................................................... 321 1. D efam ation .................................................................... 321 2. Product Libel ................................................................. 331 C. Selection Judgments: Editorial Judgment ....................... 335 D. The Appropriation, Copyright, and Trademark Cases ................................................................ 342 1. Appropriation .............................................................. 344 2. Copyright .............................. 348 t Part II of this article, "Quality as Meaning," was published in modified form as The 'Meaning' of First Amendment Speech, 54 ETC: A REV. OF GEN. SEMANTICS 133 (Summer 1997). * Professor of Law, University of Iowa. 276 HASTINGS COMM/ENT L.J. [VOL. 20:275 3. Tradem ark .................................................................... 350 E. The Commercial Speech and Advertising Cases ............................................................... 351 F. The Indecency Cases .......................................................... 359 G . C onclusion ........................................................................... 366 V. Quality as Aesthetics ................................................................ 366 A. Placing Substantive Bounds on Quality .......................... 370 1. Religious Expression .................................................... 370 2. A ctual M alice ................................................................ 371 3. Privacy ................................ 372 B. Process-based Rules of Deference ................................... 375 VI. Judging Quality ......................................................................... 379 A. Judging Quality Short of the Aesthetic ........................... 382 B. Aesthetic Quality as a Speech-Protective Check: The Perplexing Case of Boggs v. Bowron ................................................................. 385 1. Boggs v. Bowron ........................................................... 386 2. A Role for Aesthetics? ............................ ..................... 389 V II. C onclusion ................................................................................. 392 1998] QUALITY OF FIRST AMENDMENT SPEECH It would be a dangerous undertakingfor persons trained only to the law to constitute themselves final judges of the worth of pictorial illustrations,outside of the narrowestand most obvious limits. Holmes, J., 1903.1 [W]e would be better advised to adopt as a legal maxim what has long been the wisdom of mankind: De gustibus non est disputandum. Just as there is no use arguing about taste, there is no use litigating about it. For the law courts to decide 'What is Beauty' is a novelty even by today's standards. Scalia, J., 1987.2 Introduction It is axiomatic that the quality of speech-its goodness or badness from a literary, artistic, or aesthetic perspective, or its effectiveness in communicating to an audience-should bear no relationship to its protection under the First Amendment. This was made clear at the very beginning of modern First Amendment jurisprudence, when the Court, often speaking through Justice Holmes, extended free speech protection to "silly little" pamphlets and dangerous ideas unartfully put.3 As recently as the 1994 Term, the Court extended full First Amendment protection to an analytically incomplete and grammatically imperfect anonymous flyer distributed by Margaret McIntyre, a 47 year-old housewife and mother, at a public meeting on a school bond referendum in Columbus, Ohio.4 In the fields of obscenity,5 defamation,6 privacy,7 literature,8 film,9 and the 1. Bleistein v. Donaldson Lithographing Co., 188 U.S. 239,251 (1903). 2. Pope v. Illinois, 481 U.S. 497, 505 (1987) (Scalia, J., concurring). 3. Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616, 628 (1919) (Holmes, J., dissenting). See also Bleistein, 188 U.S. at 251-52. 4. McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm'n., 514 U.S. 334 (1995). 5. See Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 (1957); Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973); Pope,481 U.S. 497 (1987). 6. See New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964). 7. In the public disclosure privacy tort, for example, a disclosure's "offensiveness" to ordinary sensibilities is relevant, but this concerns social norms and tolerance, not the presence or absence of aesthetic or literary quality. See W. PAGE KEETON ET AL., PROSSER & KEETON ON THE LAW OF TORTS § 117, at 856-63 (5th ed. 1984) [hereinafter PROSSER & KEETON]; Randall P. Bezanson, The Right to Privacy Reviited: Privacy, News, and Social Change, 1890-1990, 80 CAL. L. REv. 1133 (Oct. 1992). 8. See, e.g., 'John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure' v. Attorney Gen. of Mass., 383 U.S. 413 (1966). 9. Kingsley Int'l Pictures Corp. v. Regents, 360 U.S. 684 (1959). HASTINGS COMM/ENT L.J. [VOL. 20:275 performing arts, 10 the quality of the writing or performance, and even its accuracy, bears no relationship, at least as a threshold matter,11 to the application of the First Amendment's protection. As with most axioms, the axiom that the quality of speech bears no rightful relationship to the First Amendment's application or to its protection knows exceptions. Indeed, First Amendment doctrine, it turns out, is riddled with them. In the field of obscenity, for example, qualitative considerations are made relevant to the very application of the First Amendment. Expression that meets the definition of obscenity is treated as if it were not speech at all, and thus the First 1 2 Amendment is simply inapplicable to restrictions placed upon it. Courts employ a similar approach with defamatory speech. 3 More often, however, the Court passes by the threshold question, treating the speech as if it were protected by the First Amendment, and then proceeds to calibrate the rules for the extent of its protection based, in whole or in material part, on qualitative considerations. Defamation is an example of this approach, as well, when the issues of accuracy and intent are brought into play,' 4 but the methodology is more explicit in the areas of privacy, where newsworthiness is considered, 5 and commercial speech, where questions of deceptiveness and truthfulness are made an explicit part of the constitutional standard.' 6 As we will see, however, qualitative considerations run much deeper than even these examples suggest. 10. See Southeastern Promotions, Ltd. v. Conrad, 420 U.S. 546 (1975) (concerning the rock musical "Hair"). 11. As discussed at length in this article, considerations that bear a resemblance to qualitative judgments do often play a role in calibrating the level or extent of First Amendment protection to be afforded to certain types of speech, but this issue is addressed after the initial determination that the speech is protected by the First Amendment. I thus distinguish the application of the First Amendment from the degree of its protection. This methodology is well established in the areas of defamation (where falsity