A Legal “Crush”

Stanley Fish writes that the recent Supreme Court decision striking down a statute criminalizing the production and sale of videos depicting animal cruelty in a manner intended to satisfy a particular “sexual fetish” is no surprise. Previous cases found speech to be a value in and of itself, no matter what its content or effect. The standard is not “does this speech have any intrinsic worth or does it benefit or harm society,” but “is it expressive activity?”