Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

To the Editor:

Your April 24 editorial
praising the Supreme Court’s Stevens ruling affording protection to
videos including the most explicit depictions of animals being cruelly
maimed or killed as being “respectful” of the First Amendment while
denouncing the court’s Citizens United ruling protecting corporate and
union speech as “reckless” reflects a disturbing inversion of First
Amendment values.

The Stevens case rightly protected the vile
portrayals of animals being tortured but only because the First
Amendment generally “reflects a judgment by the American people that the
benefits of its restrictions on the government outweigh the costs.”

The
Citizens United ruling, on the contrary, protected the heart of the
First Amendment, the right to engage in political speech during the
pre-election time period, during which the Supreme Court has long held
that the Constitution’s limits on the government have their “fullest and
most urgent application to speech.”

Your endorsement of the first
ruling while condemning the second reflects an odd sense of First
Amendment priorities.

Floyd Abrams
New York, April 25, 2010
The writer, a
prominent First Amendment lawyer, submitted an amicus curiae brief on
behalf of Senator Mitch McConnell to the Supreme Court in the Citizens
United case.

Note from KBJ: Expecting the editorial board of the New York Times to be logically consistent is like expecting a lion to purr.