In ‘The Huffington Post,’ Greg Points out Dangers of Pro-Speech Code ‘Harvard Law Review’ Comment

In his blog at The Huffington Post, Greg elaborates on an observation made by the Law Librarian Blog (LLB) regarding FIRE's harsh criticism of a comment defending speech codes in the Harvard Law Review.

"Obviously," LLB comments, "FIRE is trying to minimize the impact the comment may have by all means possible." Exactly right, says Greg, who then lays out in detail four reasons why this is so:

First, despite all the law to the contrary and no less than eight prior decisions ruling speech codes unconstitutional, what some might consider to be the premier law journal in the country published a comment legitimizing campus speech codes. That's a problem because while speech codes have had the law uniformly against them for decades now, as many as three quarters of the universities in the country still maintain unconstitutional speech codes. As a result, these scofflaw institutions are glad to grab any ammunition to defend their speech codes that they can find-even a sloppy, shoddy unsigned student comment in the Harvard Law Review.

I'll leave you to go to The Huffington Post to read the other three. As Greg says, the potential impact of the HLR comment cannot be underestimated—nor can the need for the comment to be discredited, and quickly.