We promote intellectual freedom and the avoidance of censorship.
The academic law librarian should support the intellectual freedom of the academic community that they serve, and evade censorship at all costs. Especially in a law school environment, it is of utmost importance to advocate the First Amendment right, “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” The intention of a library within a higher education environment is to provide as much learning materials as possible for the students and faculty, in order for them to collaborate to create new ideas and knowledge. By providing unrestricted access to materials, no matter their controversial subject matter, libraries can show they support intellectual freedom, which is defined by the American Library Association (2002) as “the right of every individual to both seek and receive information from all points of view without restriction.” For example, for a judge to make a decision, they would want to hear all sides of the case. To censor, would take away different points of view. To restrict access to materials based on their subject matter alone would be considered censorship, which is defined by the American Library Association (2002) as “the suppression of ideas and information that certain persons… find objectionable or dangerous.” For example, if one were to censor, it would cause the members of the academic law community to lose good information that they could have used in an argument for a case.
Justification for this principle can be argued with John Stuart Mill’s utilitarian perspective, that if we censor false information our true beliefs become dead dogmas (Fallis, 2009). If an academic law librarian were to remove all old legal materials, they would no longer have the justifications needed for the current legal materials. Legislative history, for example, can be tracked to find out when the law changed, and most importantly why it changed. Thus, if an academic law librarian censored false information (such as legal materials that are no longer true) then they would be creating dead dogmas within the law materials that support the academic community. In addition, according to Mill, if one were to censor information, there is the possibility they would censor out some true information (Fallis, 2009). Wolkoff (1996) argues that "claiming to know the absolute truth about anything is a very risky proposition” (p.8). For example, if a controversial book was not added to the collection, the academic law librarian could be censoring out some true information that could have helped a member of the academic community.
This principle could come into conflict with Principle 1 of the Academic Law Librarian Code of Ethics, which deals with providing access to information. Intellectual freedom deals with what information we have access to, whereas Principle 1 deals with who has access (Fallis, 2009). If a librarian were to choose to censor information, thereby going against Principle 2, they would also be giving up Principle 1. So in many ways, for this principle to work, the academic law librarian must also practice Principle 1, providing access to information to the academic community.
A good example of a concrete application of this principle would occur when a student requests a book be purchased by the library that is about a controversial topic. If it is within budgetary means, and met the collection development policy (which provides answers to the scope and purpose of the collection), then the academic law librarian would purchase the book for the library based on the student’s request. It would be noted that the student requested the book, but only for the purpose of notifying the student of the book’s arrival to the collection. This protects the intellectual freedom of the student because as Doyle (2001) states, “for intellectual freedom to be genuine, people must have the confidence that they will not be harassed for what they seek out” (p.69). Thus to apply this principle, the librarian is not censoring information because it is controversial, and they are not telling anyone except those who need to know, in order to get the book to the student.