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10/21/2003 Archived Entry: "BROWN IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR"

DEFENDING JANICE BROWN: Marvelous article by Marni Soupcoff, daughter of ESR contributor Murray Soupcoff, on the Iconoclast web site about Janice Brown. She's a Bush nominee to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals and also a target of liberals.

Since Governor Pete Wilson appointed her to California's highest court in 1996, Brown has been a consistent defender of Californians' property rights, economic liberty, and freedom of speech.

Brown wrote a searing dissent in Aguilar v. Avis Rent-A-Car System , a case in which the California Court instituted an unprecedented prior restraint on speech (essentially, singling out certain words and banning their use in the workplace under any circumstances). In a "friend of the court" brief, the supposed guardians of freedom of expression at the ACLU gleefully championed the speech ban, arguing that the right to "equal treatment at work" permits "some limits on the unrestrained speech of bigots in the work place." Brown, however, proved the true protector of liberty, warning that the decision "would create the exception that swallowed the First Amendment."

Read on.