I am not a lawyer, but ... Since the 1940s, the Supreme Court has drawn a distinction between political speech and commercial speech, in order to allow government restrictions on the latter. While this interpretation of the First Amendment has sometimes proven controversial in constitutional law circles (there are some First Amendment advocates who feel that there is no constitutional basis for stripping FA protections from certain classes of speech just because they are commercial in nature), this precedent is what allows legislation such as the Do-Not-Call Act to pass constitutional muster.
Political speech, on the other hand, is something the courts have been far more reluctant to allow Congress to tamper with. After all, if there is any class of speech that the FA was clearly designed to protect, it is political speech. And advocacy for or against candidates or causes during an election season is about as purely political a type of speech as exists. So any attempt to extend the Do-Not-Call act to prohibit political calls would quickly end up in court, where it would almost certainly run into unsympathetic judges.
However, there is nothing preventing politicians from voluntarily abjuring the use of campaign robo-calls. There is an organization called Citizens for Civil Discourse that encourages politicians to pledge not to call phone numbers registered by citizens at CCD's web site.
Bob Goudreau Cary, NC
***** Moderator's Note *****IANALB I have to ask "Why"?
The First Amendment was written before the invention of electronic communication. It could not have been written with telephones in mind, let alone cellphones, pagers, robot dialers and computerized call centers.
IMNSHO, the only thing I can imagine the Founding Fathers had in mind was to prevent intimidation, threats, or mayhem against those advocating unpopular views or beliefs. It wasn't because they liked hearing idiots drool politicized platitudes, any more that you or I: it was simply a practical necessity. Speaking "On the stump" was even more a staple of political life at that time than this: after all, many of the voters were illiterate.
The salient feature of the guarantee of free speech is that it assures a speaker the right to advance his views - to anyone willing to hear them. Implicit in any guarantee of "free" speech is the obligation to assure the freedom of those you seek to convince, and that includes not only the freedom not to listen, but also the freedom to avoid the choice of deciding if you should.
Telephones are intrusive by their nature: we are all trained in the pavlovian response of diving for the receiver when the bell sounds. It does not matter what we think of the message or the way it is being delivered - the phone interrupts us and demands our awareness, and we salivate in time with the gong no matter what we may desire. We have, to be sure, the freedom not to listen - but it is a far cry from the freedom not to walk by the Common or the freedom not to attend a public rally or even the freedom not to pay attention to your wife at the dinner table. Telephones are designed to require, and their advertises do their best to promote, a demand for immediate response and undivided attention.
It isn't fair, and I don't think I should be required to pretend it is. I don't just want the right not to listen - I want the right to not be bothered.
Bill Horne Temporary Moderator
P.S. I have said it before, and will now repeat:
[Moderator, please obfuscate my address, both in this message itself and in the Table of Contents of the Digest issue in which it appears. Thanks.]PUT IT IN THE SUBJECT! IF I HADN'T DECIDED TO ADD A COMMENT, I MIGHT HAVE MISSED THIS!!