A Chilling Effect.

• Author: Nagel, Robert

A Chilling Effect.

Lois Forer. Norton, $18.95. The world portrayed by Judge Forer will be familiar to the reporters, authors, professors, and lawyers who make up the free speech lobby. Because these afficionados find it congenial to think that the First Amendement is under ferocious attack by the forces of darkness, they may even find her description belivable.

According to Forer, we live in a world where private censors relentlessly cut off access to ideas. Citizens pressure schools about book select. Consumers boycott products advertised on controversial TV shows. Generals sue over cartoon parodies in raunchy magazines. Disappointed professors sue over their colleagues' assessment of their scholarship. Everywhere thinskinned, humorless, avaricious people are suing. The United States teeters on the brink of becoming "an enormous silent gulag patrolled not by government agents but by private persons..." This, Judge Forer adds, "is not an imaginary fancy."

It's not? as a description of a country where judges have long made a fetish of protecting freedom of speech and where an unprecedented amount and variety of information is avialable to all, it is balderdash. But read the book anyway. Somehow, Judge Forer, starting from a grossly distorted description, ends up with a sensible prescription.

Forer's approach is unusual in that she does not distrust juries or the general public, and she does not propose excluding them from free speech issues. On the other hand, she does think that the role of the Supreme Court should be greatly restricted. Even its best efforts have led only to a hopeless profusion of arcane legal distinctions that produce uncertainty and invite the kind of litigation that chills speech.

Instead, she proposes a new federal statute incorporating a host of specific, commonsensical solutions. Some are aimed to encouraging private methods of prevention or correction. These include apologies, retracractions, disclaimers, lableing, and even...