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102 Yale L.J. 1293 (1992-1993)
The Freedom of Speech

handle is hein.journals/ylr102 and id is 1305 raw text is: Address The Freedom of Speech* The Honorable John Paul Stevenst Throughout history the seeds of intolerance have produced injustice and conflict. In Rouen, France in 1431, a nineteen-year-old woman who wore men's clothes, who fought bravely in the French army, and who insisted that she communicated directly with God, was burned at the stake after she was found guilty of witchcraft and heresy. In Salem, Massachusetts in 1692, Samuel Sewall, a Harvard graduate, a devout man, and a duly elected judge, found nineteen persons, mostly women, guilty of witchcraft'-a capital offense punishable by hanging.2 Today the weeds of intolerance poison the relations between neighbors in all parts of the globe-in Northern Ireland, in the Holy Land, in Bosnia, in Eastern Germany, in Azerbaijan, and in some parts of the United States. It seems appropriate, therefore, to ask why (or perhaps even whether) the First Amendment of our Constitution should afford extraordinary protection to the apostles of intolerance. That it does in fact provide such protection is demonstrated by two cases decided by the Supreme Court earlier this year. In Dawson v. Delaware,3 the Court held that the State had violated the First Amendment by introducing evidence that the defendant was a member of a white racist gang known as the * Justice Stevens delivered this speech as the inaugural Ralph Gregory Elliot First Amendment Lecture at Yale Law School, October 27, 1992. t Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States. 1. REV. N. H. CHAMBERLAIN, SAMUEL SEWALL AND THE WORLD HE LIVED IN 167 (2d ed. 1967). 2. See generally N. E. H. HULL, FEMALE FELONS: WOMEN AND SERIOUS CRIME IN COLONIAL MASSACHUSETrS 19-36 (1987) (documenting prosecution of women for felony crime of witchcraft in England and in Massachusetts). 3. 112 S. Ct. 1093 (1992). 1293

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