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18 Law & Phil. 1 (1999)

handle is hein.journals/lwphil18 and id is 1 raw text is: THOMAS W. PEARD DIANA TIETJENS MEYERS'S REMEDY FOR ABUSIVE SPEECH: OBJECTIONS In Rights in Collision: A Non-Punitive, Compensatory Remedy for Abusive Speech,1 Diana Tietjens Meyers outlines an admittedly unorthodox proposal for compensating victims of abusive speech on college and university campuses. In this paper, I object to her proposal and to its underlying rationale. In Section I, I describe the remedy Meyers proposes and its grounds. In Section II, I raise the following objections to Meyers's remedy: (i) it unfairly and unjustifiably imposes sole liability on the university for harm caused by hate speech; (ii) it is open to constitutional objections, contrary to one of its principal motivating grounds; (iii) it unnecessarily duplicates existing causes of action and is otherwise infeasible. In Section III, I consider the grounds for Meyers's proposal. I argue that Meyers does not establish the existence of a conflict of rights which her proposed remedy is intended to resolve. I also criticize her characterization of the victim's right as non-universal. I further claim that Meyers's objections to the so-called classic conception of basic rights are not telling. I conclude that Meyers's compensatory remedy for abusive speech is untenable and that her rationale lacks cogency. I. MEYERS'S PROPOSAL Meyers holds that universities face a dilemma arising from two seemingly incompatible moral claims. On the one hand, free speech must be robust on university and college campuses. Therefore, even 1 Diana Tietjens Meyers, Rights in Collision: A Non-Punitive, Compensatory Remedy for Abusive Speech, Law and Philosophy 14 (1995): pp. 203-243. LA Law and Philosophy 18: 1-12, 1999. © 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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