Kenneth Karst’s Equality as a Central Principle in the First Amendment

In 1975, Kenneth Karst published his groundbreaking article, Equality as a Central Principle in the First Amendment, as part of a symposium celebrating the life and contributions of Harry Kalven, one of the great First Amendment thinkers of the twentieth century. Karst was one of the first scholars to recognize a fundamental shift in First Amendment jurisprudence. Until the Supreme Court’s 1972 decision in Police Department of Chicago v Mosley, the Court had not articulated the principle of equal liberty of expression in Supreme Court decisions.4 That is, before Mosley, the question in First Amendment cases was typically whether the government had impermissibly denied an individual the right to engage in a particular activity—speech. As Karst noted, in Mosley the Court began thinking also in terms of equality.