The first successful ACLU case at
the U.S. Supreme Court was, not surprisingly, a free
speech case. Also not surprising, it is a bit of an overstatement to call
the case “successful”. In 1925, ACLU cooperating attorney Walter Pollack argued
a criminal appeal on behalf of Benjamin Gitlow, who had been convicted of
violating New York’s anti-anarchy law
after he circulated a pamphlet extolling the virtues of proletariat revolution.
The Supreme Court upheld the
conviction, but in doing so it recognized for the first time that Freedom of
Speech was one of the fundamental rights protected by the Fourteenth Amendment,
thus expanding the U.S. Constitution’s protection.
Now, 84 years later, we are reminded
of the continuing vitality of our freedom of speech by a ruling
from the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. There are those
in our government today who feel that the words of Tariq Ramadan are just
as dangerous as Benjamin Gitlow’s pamplets, and they used their authority to
deny him entry into this country and an opportunity to teach
at Notre Dame. The District Court dismissed Mr. Ramadan’s challenge, but
the Court of Appeals recognized that censorship, whether in the form of
criminalization or immigration decisions, has no place in our country. The
lawyers and judges change, the plaintiffs and ideas change, but what has not
changed is that the government may not decide which ideas are safe for the
public to hear and which are too dangerous.