Forum Analysis Versus Government Speech Doctrine
In several important cases, courts have decided that what appeared to be viewpoint-based censorship in a forum was actually the government's tailoring of its own speech, which need not be viewpoint neutral, and that no forum was in fact created. When a governmental entity, such as a public broadcaster, employs the speech of ordinary citizens to further its goals, the government speech doctrine blocks citizens' First Amendment claims that the government set up a forum for them, and unconstitutionally suppressed speech in it.
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Famous quotes containing the words forum, analysis, government, speech and/or doctrine:
“If I should ever decide in the future to discuss my deep Christian beliefs and condemnation and sinfulness, I would use another forum besides Playboy.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Ask anyone committed to Marxist analysis how many angels on the head of a pin, and you will be asked in return to never mind the angels, tell me who controls the production of pins.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1934)
“A little group of wilful men reflecting no opinion but their own have rendered the great Government of the United States helpless and contemptible.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“If the oarsmen of a fast-moving ship suddenly cease to row, the suspension of the driving force of the oars doesn’t prevent the vessel from continuing to move on its course. And with a speech it is much the same. After he has finished reciting the document, the speaker will still be able to maintain the same tone without a break, borrowing its momentum and impulse from the passage he has just read out.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C)
“The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified submission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is the doctrine of despotism, and ought to have no place ‘mong Republicans and Christians.”
—Angelina Grimké (1805–1879)