Meiklejohn, Alexander (1872–1964)
MEIKLEJOHN, ALEXANDER (1872–1964)
Alexander Meiklejohn was a philosopher, president of Amherst College, and director of an experimental college at the University of Wisconsin. After his long academic career he became a civil liberties publicist. His Free Speech and Its Relation to Self-Government (1948) presented the first amendment as the foundation of political democracy. He advocated that citizens should have the same unlimited freedom of speech as their representatives. Regarding the clear and present danger test and balancing tests as annulments of the First Amendment, he criticized oliver wendell holmes and zechariah chafee as proponents of a stunted interpretation of free speech. In the McCarthy period he defended the right of communists to teach. His essay, "The First Amendment Is An Absolute," written when he was almost ninety, summarized his position, which was not really absolutist. Distinguishing "the freedom of speech" from "speech," he believed that private defamation, obscenity, perjury, false advertising, and solicitation of crime were not constitutionally protected. His absolutism seems to have extended to speech concerning all matters of public policy, education, philosophy, arts, literature, and science, but he believed that even protected speech was subject to reasonable regulations of time and place. Meiklejohn was closer to Holmes and Chafee than he admitted.
Leonard W. Levy
(1986)