COMM 317: Final exams, 'marketplace of ideas'

The connection between these two concepts is that the marketplace of ideas" will be all over our final exam in Communications 317. Capice? The exam will be a take-home, and I'll have the questions for you next week. In the meantime, here are some links, quotes and reading assignments to get you started.

First, the quotes. Here's the key quote, from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.'s dissenting opinion in Abrams v. United States:

... when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas...that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution.

I copied it from the Wikipedia article on the marketplace metaphor. But it's also in "Make No Law" and other sources.

In class today (Thursday) I'll give you several handouts relating to current political developments. And I'll assign you two articles on the Internet to read for class Tuesday and, of course, your final exam question on the marketplace of ideas. (How much more blatant can I get?) Here are links to the articles:

• Former Vice President Al Gore's remarks at a 2005 media conference in which he said he believes "something has gone basically and badly wrong in the way America's fabled 'marketplace of ideas' now functions."
  
• An article by Wat Hopkins of Virginia Tech analyzing use of the "marketplace" metaphor in U.S. Supreme Court decisions. The article is titled "The Supreme Court Defines the Marketplace of Ideas." It's a PDF file, and you'll have to do your own Google search on author and title.