Animal cruelty videos protected free expression, says US Supreme Court

21 Apr 10 | Uncategorized

File this one under “interesting”.

The US Supreme Court has ruled that a ban on videos portraying animal cruelty contravene’s the country’s First Amendment, which guarantees free speech.

Laws were introduced in 1999 to prevent the distribution of “crush” videos, showing small animals being stepped on by stiletto heels (yes, really).

But Supreme Court judges voted 8-1 in declaring the laws on depictions of animal cruelty too broad. While there are laws against animal cruelty itself in place, the Supreme Court was unwilling to draw up a new category of prohibited expression. Campaigners had warned that the law was too broad, and could incriminate depictions of bullfights, and even hunting magazines.

Read more here

Free speech reigns Supreme

05 Oct 09 | Uncategorized

This is a guest post by Mark Stephens

The new Supreme Court, in its first ruling on an issue of law, has decided that open justice requires the naming of Mohammed al Ghabra, whom the lower courts had protected by anonymity orders. In the first contested issue before the new court, Mr Geoffrey Robertson QC told the judges on behalf of the media “[Y]our first term docket reads like alphabet soup”, referring to the number of appellants referred to only by letters of the alphabet, because they had been granted “pseudonym orders” by lower courts.
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