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6 Geo. Mason L. Rev. 35 (1997-1998)
Holocaust Denial and the First Amendment: The Quest for Truth in a Free Society

handle is hein.journals/gmlr6 and id is 49 raw text is: 19971 HOLOCAUST DENIAL AND THE FIRST AMENDMENT: THE QUEST FOR TRUTH IN A FREE SOCIETY Kenneth Lasson INTRODUCTION Veritas vos liberabit.' From the ashes of the Holocaust we have come once again to learn the terrible truth, that the power of Evil cannot be underestimated. Nor can the effect of the spoken and written word. It has been but a half-century since the liberation of Nazi death camps, a little more than a decade since the First International Conference on the Holocaust and Human Rights,2 and a few short years since the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum first put on display its documentation of horror. Yet today that form of historical revisionism popularly called Holocaust deni- al abounds worldwide in all its full foul flourish. As the generation of survivors dwindles, whose words will win? In a global environment increasingly dominated by mass media of manifold form and format, we have also begun to understand that what is printed on paper or broadcast on television or bytten into cyberspace affects everyone, actually or subliminally. Conversely, what is rejected or otherwise left out is doomed to the World of Communication Failure or, worse, of Ignorance and Misunderstanding. Who decides what is to appear in the vast and burgeoning market- place of ideas? Many of those important choices are vested in editors and publishers, upon whom the Constitution confers almost unfettered discre- tion.3 Restrictions are few and seldom imposed; for the most part journal- ists can write, say, depict---or ignore-just about anything they want. And that's the way we like it. That's the American way. Freedom of thought and expression, after all, is one of our most hallowed liberties-limited . Professor of Law, University of Baltimore. The author thanks Brian L. Moffet of the University of Baltimore School of Law for his diligent research assistance; Prof. Gerald Zuriff of Wheaton College (Mass.) for his insightful comments on the manuscript during its preparation; and Jesse D. Lyon and Brock A. Swartzle of the George Mason Law Review for their excellent editorial comments and suggestions. 1The truth shall make you free. 2 The conference, sponsored by the Boston College Law School HolocaustlHuman Rights Re- search Project and the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai Brith, was held on April 17, 1986. See Debate, Freedom of Speech and Holocaust Denial, 8 CARDOZO L. REV. 559 (1987). 3 See U.S. CONST. amend. I.

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