Legal Commentary

When you think of Cleveland, what do you think of? Skyrocketing unemployment and rampant real estate foreclosures? The Cuyhoga River burning? Or -- if you're really paying attention -- the site of the first-ever successful near-total face transplant in the U.S.?

How about the fertile birthplace of our modern First Amendment jurisprudence? Ok, so maybe I'm exaggerating, but it was in a suburb of Cleveland that, fifty years ago, Louis Malle's The Lovers caused an enormous stir and eventually gave rise to the Supreme Court case of Jacobellis v. Ohio and Justice Powell's dictum "I know it when I see it." In fact, my colleague Jonathan Entin gives away a "legal history tour" of Cleveland every year as his contribution to the public interest auction, in which he takes students around to the many landmarks marking the many landmark Supreme Court cases to come out of this town. (Mapp v. Ohio, for example, which was also an obscenity case, arose in Cleveland.)

And lest you think the title of this blog post was pure sensationalism, I'll also point out that Cleveland can claim as its own this guy, once called "the Bill Gates of porn" by U.S. News & World Report. (And we all know how reliable that publication is.)

-- Also, thanks to Dan, et al. for inviting me back as a guest blogger this month. (I hope they're not regretting their decision!)