Yquotes.com

 

I define speech as any communicative activity. [Can it be nonverbal?] Yes. [Can it be nonverbal and also not written?] Yes. [Can it encompass physical actions?] Yes. Watt [Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Watt, 703 F.2d 586 (1983)] was a case in which what was at issue was sleeping as communicative activity. What I said was that for purposes of the heightened protections that are accorded, sleeping could not be speech. That is to say, I did not say that one could prohibit sleeping merely for the purpose of eliminating the communicative aspect of sleeping, if there is any . . . [and] I did not say that the Government could seek to prohibit that communication without running afoul of the heightened standards of the first amendment. If they passed a law that allows all other sleeping but only prohibits sleeping where it is intended to communicate, then it would be invalidated. But what I did say was, where you have a general law that just applies to an activity which in itself is normally not communicative, such as sleeping, spitting, whatever you like; clenching your fist, for example; such a law would not be subject to the heightened standards of the first amendment. That is to say, if there is ordinary justification for it, it is fine. It does not have to meet the high need, the no other available alternative requirements of the first amendment. Whereas, when you are dealing with communicative activity, naturally communicative activity—writing, speech, and so forth— any law, even if it is general, across the board, has to meet those higher standards.
--
Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings, 8/5/86, transcript at pp.51-2).

 

Antonin Scalia

» Antonin Scalia - all quotes »

Similar quotes

 

Sleeping at last, the trouble and tumult over,
Sleeping at last, the struggle and horror past,
Cold and white, out of sight of friend and of lover,
Sleeping at last.

 

Christina Rossetti

 

When I'm not drinkin' baby, you are on my mind. When I'm not sleeping baby, when I'm not sleeping mama, when I'm not sleeping, you know you'll find me cryin'

 

Jackson C. Frank

 

There is, indeed, no wild beast more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate.

 

Jonathan Swift

 

There is, indeed, no wild beast more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate.

 

Christian Nestell Bovee

 

As historical and social beings we find ourselves always already in a linguistically structured lifeworld. In the forms of communication through which we reach an understanding with one another about something in the world and about ourselves, we encounter a transcending power. Language is not a kind of private property. No one possesses exclusive rights over the common medium of the communicative practices we must intersubjectively share. No single participant can control the structure, or even the course, of processes of reaching understanding and self-understanding. How speakers and hearers make use of their communicative freedom to take yes- or no-positions is not a matter of their subjective discretion. For they are free only in virtue of the binding force of the justifiable claims they raise towards one another. The logos of language embodies the power of the intersubjective, which precedes and grounds the subjectivity of speakers.

 

Jurgen Habermas‎