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Given that this column is being published on Black Friday, Im guessing that some of you gentle readers stumbled across these words when you were actually looking for a good deal on a flat screen TV. Im not offended, but as long as you are here, perhaps you like to hear about a guy named Hugo Black? This wont take long, and then you can get back to shopping.

I was recently reminded of the late US Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black of Alabama. Black was born in 1886 and was appointed to the nations highest court by FDR in 1937 and served for a then-record 35 years. He would retire in 1971 and sadly died just weeks later. But what I want to draw your attention to, given a recent Colorado Politics story, is what Justice Black didnt do and why.

For a time, mostly in the 1960s and 1970s, the US Supreme Court was called upon to adjudicate on the question of whether certain allegedly dirty movies were as the law then required for censorship utterly without redeeming value. And so, in the basement of the Court building a tiny movie theater was set up so that the various justices could come down and, well, watch the movies in question to render a judgment on their merit or lack thereof. All the Courts members watched the movies, except for one.

Hugo Black was an absolutist on the First Amendment. He argued that (with very few exceptions think fire in a crowded theater) all speech is protected, so he didnt need to check out the movies. Regardless of merit, the content was protected. He believed that free speech, freedom of the press, of assembly, and the whole lot of First Amendment rights are absolute and we are only truly free when virtually everything is protected.

And I agree.

I call myself a Hugo Black absolutist. As others have said, sunlight is the best disinfectant, and our society is best protected from demagogues when everything is out in the open (I could make a reference here to a certain former presidents quips about reducing freedom of the press, but I digress).

Therefore, I read the CP story with interest from the perspective of a HB absolutist (hey, I just realized Justice Black and I share the same initials, cool) and from the point of view of a former military cop duty that I very much enjoyed during my last two years of active duty.

It seems a gentleman who refers to himself as a YouTube journalist (which I admit, from my biased point of view seems a bit contradictory) is upset about police officers interfering with his efforts to make video recordings of their work at a traffic stop. He was recording the actions of the officers when a couple of them took umbrage and physically blocked his camera as well as shining flashlights into the lens to disrupt the recording. The Denver-based US Court of Appeals is being asked to review the case, and to rule on how and when a private person can record the police as they carry out their duties. There have been mixed messages sent by a number of courts on this issue, and I expect it to end up in the Supreme Court someday.

Admittedly, it is a complicated issue. Such factors as qualified immunity (which shields police officers from liability when discharging their public duties) and other legal principles will be considered and decided on by far smarter legal minds than mine.

But I can almost hear Hugo Blacks voice calling across the decades that the First Amendment (the free press part in particular here) is absolute. Sunlight is better than darkness when it comes to government actions.

Im quite sure that no one would have been convicted of the murder of George Floyd had video records not been made. And frankly, given that an overwhelming percentage of police/citizen interactions are handled professionally and legally by the cops, Im actually in favor of body cams being mandatory as well as videos shot by others being legal. Heck, I used to carry a small digital voice recorder with me when I was on patrol, and when I stopped a car for, say, a traffic violation, I recorded our interaction just in case that person later tried to claim I had violated their rights or had been unprofessional.

There are certainly limits of course no one should think that the First Amendment allows them to directly interfere with a police action, just as you cant get in the way of firefighters who are trying to pull someone from a burning car just to get a great YouTube video. But in general, I hope the court rules in favor of the videographer. We should want to get rid of the handful of bad cops and we should want to protect the good ones. Video recordings of police actions (within reason, as noted above) will help us do both those things. Had they been available when I was on patrol, I would have welcomed a body cam.

Hugo Black was right the freer we are the safer we are from oppression.

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.

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BIDLACK | Sunlight is the best disinfectant | Opinion | coloradopolitics.com - coloradopolitics.com