Kerric Harvey
The George Washington University

Much of the intrinsic tension between those who defend U.S. fire speech rights and
those who are concerned with protections against hate speech and other harmful utter-
ance revolves around competing interpretations of the First Amendment. These differ-
ent ways of understanding the constitutional guarantees of fire expression hinge, in
tum, on conflicts between absolutist and relativist views of the Constitution -- whether
the letter or the spirit of the law should be the guiding criteria for judicial action.

The issue reduces to a difference of opinion about how to "read" constitutional
texts, particularly as the United States continues to diversify and as the social con-
texts within which its governing documents are situated become ever more com-
plex. Additionally, the evolution of an avalanche of new communication
technologies, loosely grouped under the heading "on-line media," compel media
practitioners and policymakers alike to revisit several of the fundamental under-
pinnings of traditional free speech concepts.

The issue of how to conceptualize the Constitution -- and by extension, the First
Amendment -- has always become problematized by the societal attitudes toward
women and minorities. The historically consistent underprivileging of women, in
particular, suggests how very urgent it might be to re-frame the First Amendment
in the light of a commercially based press and an increasingly technologized na-

Note: Some of the ideas explored in this chapter were first presented in the Law Division of the As-
sociation for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, 1995 annual conference, in Washing-
ton, DC, August 8-14.

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