Is there an exception to free speech if its purpose is to exclude from the conversation certain views or groups? Ulrich Baer and Ted Gup have written dueling commentaries on this question. Baer argues that campuses are right to deny a forum to speakers whose racist or misogynist message defines other voices as unworthy of participation in the debate. Gup answers that once the principle of free speech is abridged for any reason, the inevitable result is more power for those who have already have it, more danger for those who do not. The protection Baer believes he is extending to the marginalized and underprivileged will turn out to be the road to their further victimization. Gupta sees Baer as mistaken that an exception carved out for the most just or compassionate of reasons can be kept under control and not abused for baser purposes.

There is a strong echo of this argument in the conflicts over campaign finance regulation. Those who would like to see the imposition of tighter limits on campaign spending are often making a Baer-like argument, with a twist. They do not peg their point to the content of the paid message: It could be on any subject. But they believe that the capacity to spend heavily to promote one’s views is an act of domination over those who don’t have the resources to answer. The wealthy are establishing an exclusive forum for speech funded at that level: Only a few can participate. This is an affront to democratic self-governance. It is, to borrow Baer’s words, threatening to “equal access to pubic speech,” and limits serve to “ensure the conditions” of such speech.

So, seen through this perspective much like Baer’s, limits are justified. And, just as Baer argues, staunch campaign finance advocates have long maintained that speakers restricted in the use of one outlet for their views can always can turn to others. Those whose speech confronts limits are still free to hold their beliefs and express them, just not at liberty to spread them on whatever terms and in whatever ways they choose.

The Supreme Court in Buckley v. Valeo famously rejected the notion that the speech of some may be limited in order to lift up the speech of others. Gup goes farther, insisting that, even if speech limits are intended to have this leveling effect, they usually don’t. The historical record to which Gup appeals tends to show that well-intended speech restrictions end up working against the interests of the marginalized and underprivileged. Once limits on access to a forum may be set, choices of who may spend, and how much, must be made. Gup writes that“ the advocacy of a dynamic line between protected and unprotected speech grants a license to those in power to smother dissent of all sorts….”

The Senate’s invocation of Rule 19 against Senator Warren could not have been more curiously timed. Supposedly concerned to uphold senatorial debate standards, to keep out the nasty stuff, Senate Republicans disqualified Warren from further debate on the Sessions nomination because she read from Coretta Scott King’s 1986 statement opposing Mr. Sessions’ elevation to the bench. Meanwhile, the President routinely tweets out abuse of political adversaries, in the courts or (as in the case of John McCain) in the Congress.

Of course, the President is not bound by the Congressional rules and traditions. But that is the interesting question: if there are standards to be applied to democratic debate, especially to the remarks of senior elected officials, why should those standards be limited to legislative speech? And, if extended to executive branch speech, how?

It might be thought that standards of this kind are significant only in the management of a deliberative body: their function could simply be to avert fist fights on “the floor,” where debate takes place, or, short of violence, to keep order. There is more to them than just this functional administrative purpose. When the Senate censured Joe McCarthy in 1954, the politics were complex, but the Resolution noted his verbal abuse of adversaries. It cited his accusations that the Senate was convening a “lynch-party” against him, that a senior Member directing the Select Committee censure inquiry was “cowardly,” and that the Committee was acting as “attorneys-in-fact” for the Communist Party. The Senate applied the severe penalty of censure in part because McCarthy’s vicious speech violated “senatorial ethics” and "tended to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute."

This goal of protecting against institutional disrepute has been reflected for years in the ethics codes of both the House and the Senate.  See, e.g. S. Res. 338, 88th Cong., 2d. Sess. (1964]; House Rule XXIII Cl. 1 (“A Member, Delegate, Resident Commissioner, officer, or employee of the House shall behave at all times in a manner that shall reflect creditably on the House.”) Members engaged in abusive and irresponsible speech are not only disregarding some housekeeping regulation, like a prohibition against bringing their dinners into the chambers: They are presumptively acting in violation of their personal ethical obligations. There is no reason why reckless, vituperative speech by executive branch officials would not bring dishonor and discredit to that branch of the Government.