Ep. 48 ‘Natural Rights and the First Amendment’ w/ Jud Campbell

Did the founders intend for the First Amendment to protect as
much speech as it does today?


University of Richmond Assistant Professor of Law Jud Campbell
argues probably not. He is the author of an article recently
published in The Yale Law Journal that Cass Sunstein says “might
well be the most illuminating work on the original understanding
of free speech in a generation.”


In “Natural Rights and the First Amendment,” professor Campbell
argues that the founders’ understanding of the freedoms of speech
and of the press rested on “a multifaceted understanding of
natural rights that no longer survives in American constitutional
thought.” He contends that those rights “were expansive in scope
but weak in their legal effect, allowing for restrictions of
expression to promote the public good.”


On this episode of So to Speak, we investigate professor
Campbell’s claims and wonder, if true, what — if anything — we
should do about them.


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