"White examines the hold of analogical reasoning on the legal imagination by assessing the way courts responded to innovations in the social world. The two examples that are the subject of this essay are the treatment of radio and motion pictures in the early part of the twentieth century. He looks at how law responded to these innovations and, in particular, how courts responded to challenges to efforts to impose a regulatory regime on them. The drive to regulate emerged from a particular awareness of the media’s mass quality and the immediacy of the effects the created; in addition, it was fueled by the Progressive Era’s tendency to approve regulation by experts as a way of addressing social concerns. Yet these regulations, at least from the perspective of today, raise serious First Amendment issues. White examines cases challenging regulation to sow that analogical reasoning was used to construct a legal history in such a way as to justify regulation in spite of the First Amendment. In the case of film, courts constructed such a history by categorizing it as a form of property. Like property, film might be used to do “evil.” Courts then conjured the history of the “police powers” by which states could invoke their powers to protect the morals of the public. In addition, they brought the regulation of film within the history of administrative law and, as a result, focused only on the nature of the legislative delegation involved. Having established framework of analogies, courts then were able to bring to bear the relevant precedents. In their treatment of those cases they tended to anticipate the position of Marshall in “Payne”, insisting on the value of consistency and continuity of law’s doctrinal structure."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
pp.22-23
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Precedents
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Precedents
47 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Precedents →
Related Quotes
"The right hon. Gentleman tells us to go back to precedents; with him a great measure is always founded on a small pre…"
"I am ready to concede that the rule of adherence to precedent, though it ought not to be abandoned, ought to be in so…"
"What has once been settled by a precedent will not be unsettled overnight, for certainty and uniformity are gains not…"
"The repetition of a catchword can hold analysis in fetters for fifty years or more."
"If Napoleon had nuclear subs, we'd all be speaking French. So, the history thing can be oversold."
"An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even t…"
"What is today supported by precedents will hereafter become a precedent."
"Ages, precedents, have long been accumulating undirected materials, America brings builders, and brings its own style…"
"The most obvious example of the way law constructs and uses history is found in the doctrine of stare decisis and the…"
"PRECEDENT, n. In Law, a previous decision, rule or practice which, in the absence of a definite statute, has whatever…"