Tribe Weighs In On The Threshold For Censorship
ASPEN -- Harvard University Law School professor Larry Tribe referred to the infamous quote from the Supreme Court Justice he once clerked for -- Potter Stewart as he discussed first amendment rights and censorship Tuesday. Tribe said he would know violent content when he saw it.
But Tribe said censorship must be approached with caution during a speech at the Progress and Freedom Foundation's Aspen Summit.
"You can say your purpose is noble, you're not trying to create uniformity, just trying to protect kids," Tribe said. "But that does not mean you can do it with a law that's imprecise."
Tribe clerked for Stewart from 1967-1968. Stewart is well known for the obscenity case Jacobellis v. Ohio in 1964 in which he wrote that hard core pornography was hard to define, but "I know it when I see it."
Tribe joked he worked for Stewart back in the days when one of the benefits of being a clerk was watching porn in the Supreme Court basement to search for obscenity and said he did ask Stewart if he had ever encountered hard core pornography.
"He said 'just once off the coast of Algiers,'" Tribe said, noting Stewart had served in the Navy, but would not elaborate on what he actually saw that reached the mark while traveling near the capital of Algeria.
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