Protecting Childhood: Rights, Social Goals and the First Amendment in the Context of the Child Online Protection Act
Elizabeth Blanks Hindman, 15 Comm. L. & Pol’y 1 (2010)
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Through the prism of collectivist and individualist political philosophies, this article examines how three levels of federal courts articulated the conflict between individuals’ rights to speak and to access pornography and society’s need to protect children from harmful material. First, it briefly examines legal philosophy literature to set the stage. It then focuses on how judges expressed the conflict between the individual and society. It concludes that the courts should have treated both the right to speech and the need to protect children as benefits to society, which would have allowed a logically coherent discussion on social values.
