12-Rewriting Mutual

 Last week, you read Mutual Film Company vs. The Industrial Commission of Ohio (1915) and did an in-class writing exercise on professional discourse, clarity and audience.  Before class on Thurs March 26th, post to the blog your 3-17 in-class rewriting of the selection from McKenna’s opinionin.  During the second half of the class on the 26th, we will go to the 3rd floor computer lab and you will use the comment function to indicate which rewriting you think is the best and why.  To refresh your memory, I’ve written the following summary of what we did on 3-17:   

Justice McKenna’s opinion covers several issues including whether the Ohio Statute “imposes an unlawful burden on interstate commerce,” violates the free speech provisions of the US and Ohio Constitutions, and delegates “legislative power” to non elected bodies without sufficient guidance.  The section of his ruling on free speech begins as follows:  

The next contention is that the statute violates the freedom of speech and publication guaranteed by the Ohio Constitution. In its discussion counsel have gone into a very elaborate description of moving picture exhibitions and their many useful purposes as graphic expressions of opinion and sentiments, as exponents of policies, as teachers of science and history, as useful, interesting, amusing, educational, and moral. And a list of the ‘campaigns,’ as counsel call them, which may be carried on, is given. We may concede the praise. It is not questioned by the Ohio statute, and under its comprehensive description, ‘campaigns’ of an infinite variety may be conducted.

We will begin by going over the following:   

1. McKenna’s summary of the Ohio ruling Mutual is appealing
2. The section of his opinion covering interstate commerce
3. His arguments about the delegation of legislative power to the Industrial Commission of Ohio (a non-elected body) without detailing standards of “what is educational, moral, amusing or harmless” (a due-process issue).  

You will then rewrite the following passage in class.  Try and be as clear and straight-forward as you while covering what you see as the essential points.   After you have revised the passage, we will go over your versions in class.  We will focus in particular on the structure and sequence of your sentences, how much legal language you include, how you address your audience, and whether you have picked up on any of the hidden agendas and anxieties that may have lay behind the ruling. 

Films of a ‘moral, educational, or amusing and harmless character shall be passed and approved,’ are the words of the statute. No exhibition, therefore, or ‘campaign’  of complainant will be prevented if its pictures have those qualities. Therefore, however missionary of opinion films are or may become, however educational or entertaining, there is no impediment to their value or effect in the Ohio statute. But they may be used for evil, and against that possibility the statute was enacted. Their power of amusement, and, it may be, education, the audiences they assemble, not of women alone nor of men alone, but together, not of adults only, but of children, make them the more insidious in corruption by a pretense of worthy purpose or if they should degenerate from worthy purpose. 

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