Not long after the U.S. Supreme Court decided, by an 8–1 vote, thathateful speech from protestors at military funerals is protected by the FirstAmendment, the father of the fallen Marine who had brought the case ventured anopinion of his own.

“My first thought,” said Albert Snyder, “was that eightjustices didn't have the common sense that God gave a goat.”

There is, as Jeremy Waldron notes in his characteristically incisive contributionto this impressively varied and immensely valuable collection of chapters andinterviews, a “weird artificiality” about how we think about hatespeech.

All Mr. Snyder had wanted to do was bury his son, Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder,in peace and with dignity. What he endured instead was a protest from a smallchurch that believes God is punishing the United States for its tolerance ofhomosexuality. Members of the church make this point by appearing at funeralsand other public settings with signs bearing messages like “Thank God forDead Soldiers” and “God Hates Fags”.

“Since when did any of our military die so that a group of people couldtarget their families and harass them?” Mr. Snyder asked me not longbefore the Supreme Court heard his case. He had won an $11 million jury verdictagainst the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, saying the church hadcaused him emotional distress, but an appeals court reversed, invoking the FirstAmendment.