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100 Yale L.J. 2087 (1990-1991)
State Activism and State Censorship

handle is hein.journals/ylr100 and id is 2101 raw text is: Comment State Activism and State Censorship Owen M. Fisst Recent political debates prompted by the Supreme Court's flag burning decisions have once more demonstrated the depth of the nation's commitment to freedom of speech.1 Although the Court's determination to treat flag burning as an act of political expression, and thus to protect it from state interference, provoked a strong, hostile response from both the President and members of Congress, leading some to call for a constitutional amendment, the campaign to reverse the Court on this issue quickly faded. There was a sense in the body politic that the First Amendment is not simply a technical legal rule, to be amended whenever it produces inconvenient results, but rather an organizing principle of society, central to our self-understanding as a nation and founda- tional to a vast network of highly cherished social practices and institutions. It can be amended only at the risk of changing the very nature of society. The principle of freedom that the First Amendment embodies is derived from the t Alexander M. Bickel Professor of Public Law, Yale University. The work of an extraordinary group of students--Amy Adler, Jennifer K. Brown, Elizabeth E. deGrazia, Don Hawthorne, David Solomon, and Anne P. Standley-helped me enormously on this project. 1. United States v. Eichman, 110 S. Ct. 2404 (1990); Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989); see Measures to Protect the American Flag: Hearings Before the Senate Comm. on the Judiciary Proposing an Amendment to the Constitution Authorizing the Congress and the States to Prohibit the Physical Desecration of the American Flag, 101st Cong., 2d Sess. (1990); Measures to Protect the Physical Integrity of the American Flag: Hearings Before the Senate Comm. on the Judiciary, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989); Statutory and Constitutional Responses to the Supreme Court Decision in Texas v. Johnson: Hearings Before the Subcomm. on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the House Comm. on the Judiciary, 101st Cong., Ist Sess. (1989); Michelman, Saving Old Glory: On Constitutional Iconography, 42 STAN. L. REV. 1337 (1990); Nahmod, The Sacred Flag and the First Amendment, 66 IND. LU. 511 (1991). 2087