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15 Comm. L. & Pol'y 1 (2010)

handle is hein.journals/comulp15 and id is 1 raw text is: 15 COMM. L. & PoL'Y 1-23 (2010) Routledge Copyright c Taylor & Francis Group, LLC Taylor&Franis Group ISSN: 1081-1680 print/1532-6926 online T DOI: 10.1080/10811680903446208 PROTECTING CHILDHOOD: RIGHTS, SOCIAL GOALS AND THE FIRST AMENDMENT IN THE CONTEXT OF THE CHILD ONLINE PROTECTION ACT ELIZABETH BLANKS HINDMAN* On January 21, 2009, the Supreme Court of the United States dis- missed the government's appeal in Mukasey v. ACLU, ending the Child Online Protection Act's decade-long journey through the legal system. Through the prism of collectivist and individualist political philosophies, this article examines how three levels of federal courts articulated the conflict between individuals' rights to speak and to ac- cess pornography and society's need to protect children from harmful material. First, it briefly examines legal philosophy literature to set the stage. It then focuses on how judges expressed the conflict between the individual and society. It concludes that the courts should have treated both the right to speech and the need to protect children as benefits to society, which would have allowed a logically coherent discussion on social values. On January 21, 2009, the Supreme Court of the United States dis- missed the government's appeal in Mukasey v. ACLU,1 ending the Child Online Protection Act's2 decade-long journey through the legal sys- tem. Congress had passed the act, commonly known as COPA, in 1998 as its second attempt to regulate children's access to online pornogra- phy.' The case worked its way through three levels of the court system (some of them three times), four attorneys general and through all or part of the terms of three presidents. This legal analysis of COPA is founded upon on a critical question underlying the First Amendment's *Associate Professor, The Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, Washington State University. 1129 S.Ct. 1032 (2009). 2Restriction of Access by Minors to Materials Commercially Distributed by Means of World Wide Web that are Harmful to Minors, 47 U.S.C. § 231 (1998). 3The Supreme Court overturned the first attempt, the Communications Decency Act, 47 U.S.C.S. § 223, inReno v. ACLU, 521 U.S. 844 (1997).

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