The Tax on Free Speech

摘要

To anyone comcerned about free speech, the failure of the Supreme Court to rule on a case brought by Nike Inc. is more than disappointing. It's a disaster. Just about the last people you'd want to put in charge of the First Amendment are trial lawyers, whose business is suing large companies on any available pretext. The latest pretext imperils free speech, but the Supreme Court―out of intellectual laziness or reckless indifference―has unwisely given trial lawyers the power to curb and to tax free speech. Bad show. Nike is (as almost everyone knows) a huge seller of sports shoes and gear. Its most recent annual sales and profits total $10.6 billion and $474 million, respectively. Although Nike employs only 22,000 workers directly, it has contractors that make its products and have 600,000 workers in 910 factories in 51 countries. They're concentrated in China, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand, where roughly 90 percent of Nike shoes are manufactured.