Enlarged RICO threatens right of free speech

Human Life Review, Summer 1998 by Blakey, G Robert

Obviously, few who desire to bring about social or political change-to say nothing of economic justice in the labor context-will risk their jobs, homes or bank books to join demonstrations if they may be named in a suit and be forced to pay the huge legal fees generated by aggressive litigators. Even if they win, the stakes are too high; given the vagaries of modern litigation, they might lose. Such a weapon of terror against First Amendment freedoms is not what I was directed to draft in 1969. Had it been, I would have declined. It is a legal outrage that, at the behest of NOW, the federal judiciary is rewriting the law in a fashion that Congress, after careful consideration, specifically refused to draft in 1970.

Those who love the First Amendment ought not rest so easily at night in light of what NOW has so wrongly wrought.

G. Robert Blakey is O'Neill Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School and the author of the 1970 federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Statute (RICO). This article is reprinted from the May 4, 1998 edition of the National Law Journal. Copyright 1998, The New York Law Publishing Company. All rights reserved.