If you could choose/write one sentence to explain the value of free speech to the people of the world who don't get it...

... what would it be? Lawprof Stephen L. Carter — addressing the anti-blasphemy mobs — says:

The best statement of our constitutional rule remains the one announced by the U.S. Supreme Court 40 years ago in Police Department of the City of Chicago v. Mosley: “To permit the continued building of our politics and culture, and to assure self-fulfillment for each individual, our people are guaranteed the right to express any thought, free from government censorship.”

If that's the best statement, we are in trouble. I love the idea of looking for a short, apt sentence saying why we believe in protecting freedom of speech, but surely there must be hundreds of better statements than that.

To assure self-fulfillment for each individual... I think it's creepy for the government to even purport to assure self-fulfillment. You can have all the freedom in the world and it won't assure much of anything. And self-fulfillment... you have to already have a particular view of the meaning of life before you put self-fulfillment at the center of the universe. And if you're trying to convince people who begin with a conviction that God is the center, you're blocking your own pathway into their minds. (And they already want that pathway blocked.)

The NYT asks "7 legal experts to pose the questions they would like to hear [Sonia Sotomayor] answer."

There are: Stanford lawprof Kathleen M. Sullivan (who asks about the use of federalism to achieve progressive ends and the Supreme Court's response to the detainees), former secretary of homeland security Michael Chertoff (who asks about the influence of evidence, foreign law, and personal sympathy on judicial decisions), Yale lawprof Stephen L. Carter (who focuses on the limitations of the confirmation hearings, asks for the naming of a favorite Supreme Court Justice, and wonders whether Sotomayor will do something about the way these Supreme Court Justices today snipe at each other), former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (who asks whether "there is a difference between doing justice and applying the law" and whether Justices should take into account the way the United States is perceived around the world and what the standard is for overruling precedent), NYU lawprof Ronald Dworkin (who goads Sotomayor into admitting that judges can't decide cases by just "applying the law" and that it's okay for for government to have race-based policies that "reduce racial inequality and tension"), author James MacGregor Burns (who asks if Sotomayor believes in the notion of a living Constitution and whether the Constitution should be changed to abolish the power of judicial review and to require Justices to retire at age 70)... and me, your humble lawprof blogger (asking whether Sotomayor meant that "wise Latina" remark to be taken seriously, whether the Supreme Court will be better with a diverse array of Justices, and whether we ought to take note of the "extreme overrepresentation" of Catholics on the Court).