ABSTRACT
In 1994, Professor Richard Delgado wrote that in legal scholarship we were witnessing an end to what he called “First Amendment formalism” and the rise of “First Amendment legal realism.” Professor Delgado argued that long-held beliefs about speech as a “near-perfect instrument for testing ideas and promoting social progress” (p. 170) were being seriously undermined by feminist scholars, critical race theorists, and others. Professor Delgado argued that the new paradigm would allow the law to view equality as just as important as free speech, thus clearing the way for regulations on pornography and hate speech that, under First Amendment formalism, could not pass constitutional muster.
