>If I remember my "Law 101" from college, the correct term for this is prior
>restraint and would be illegal if this was a newspaper.  It is also something
>that liberals usually (and correctly) scream and hollar about.  What gives?

I should begin with a disclaimer stating that I am not a lawyer and have no
training in law.  Now, on to the meat of it:

First of all, it's unclear what the poster message means.  What, exactly,
would be illegal if 'this was a newspaper'?  Screening editorial letters,
news columns, or editorials?  Of course, all newspapers are pretty much
free to determine their content.

The next step, then, is to find out what prior restraint is.  I found the
following definition at
http://www.law.vill.edu/vls/journals/vselj/volume1_1/sol2.htm#dopr

>Identifying an action as a prior restraint is complicated by the lack of
>consensus regarding how the doctrine should be defined and applied.
>Commentators provide different definitions of prior restraint. Professor
>Melville Nimmer defined prior restraint as an "administrative or
>judicial order[ ] forbidding certain communications when issued in
>advance of the time that such communications are to occur."  In
>contrast, Professor Martin Redish defined prior restraint as "a form of
>speech regulation . . . that limits expression prior to a full and fair
>hearing in an independent judicial forum to determine whether the
>challenged expression is constitutionally protected."
>
>The government takes action amounting to a prior restraint when it
>suppresses or restrains speech before it occurs.  This threat of
>government-sanctioned censorship of material before public distribution
>makes prior restraint a disfavored method of controlling speech.  In
>Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan,  the Court stated "[a]ny system of
>prior restraints of expression comes to this Court bearing a heavy
>presumption against its constitutional validity."
>
>Although temporary restraining orders and permanent injunctions are
>typical examples of prior restraints,  the Court has not limited the
>application of the prior restraint doctrine to these two examples. For
>instance, in Bantam Books, a state-sponsored commission sent threatening
>notices to publishers and wholesale distributors of expressive material.
>The commission targeted books, pictures and songs which it believed
>promoted immorality.  The Court found that these notices, which
>notified distributors of the objectionable nature of the books and the
>commission's duty to recommend prosecution, were prior restraints
>because they subjected "the distribution of publications to a system of
>prior administrative restraints."
>
>The Court in Bantam Books determined that the commission's notices
>constituted a prior restraint by analyzing the notices' restraining
>effect on free speech.  The Court found that the commission's notices
>had a regulatory effect because they served as more than legal advice.
>The notices prevented certain material from reaching the public.  The
>Court stated that the notices' purpose was to censor speech by fostering
>self- censorship.  The Court stated that the commission's actions
>circumvented the criminal process and its procedural safeguards in order
>to censor speech without judicial involvement.  The Court also stated
>that it would ignore the form and analyze the effect of the restraint to
>"recognize that informal censorship may sufficiently inhibit the
>circulation of publications" in a manner that deserves judicially
>granted relief.  The purpose and the effect of the statute, therefore,
>are critical factors in the constitutional analysis of the prior
>restraint.

As far as I know, it has never been tested in court whether or not
electronic mailing list traffic specifically constitutes protected speech
or not.  There are probably general principles that apply.  In particular I
would say that the individual or organization who owns the server on which
LISTSERV is running can determine content, as the first amendment typically
only applies to governmental regulation and not to private organizations.

So I don't think you're breaking the law.  The question of the morality of
using review is another matter to consider.  Probably what I would write to
the guy or gal is something along the lines of the following:

>Prior restraint applies to speech that either is constitutionally
>protected or has not yet been constitutionally protected.  Since the
>first amendment applies to governmental regulation and oversight, and
>not to private organizations, and this mailing list is run by a private
>organization (me), prior restraint doesn't apply in a legal sense.  Such
>is my understanding, at least.
>
>You could argue that if prior restraint isn't operating in its technical
>legal sense, it may be operating in a moral sense.  Certainly there are
>some uses of 'review' that would make me very uncomfortable.  In this
>particular case, I felt morally justified in that my actions were intended
>to reduce traffic that I considered disruptive to my mailing list.  You
>may draw the line elsewhere.  (Is it immoral to disallow email from
>people who don't subscribe to the mailing list?  Is it immoral to use
>LISTSERV's 'spam-filtering' feature?)  We can discuss this further if
>you'd like, but the fact is that I'm the person running the list and I have
>to use my own moral judgements in doing so.

I might also offer the job of running the mailing list up if someone else
wants to do it, or tell him or her that he or she is free to create his or
her own mailing list and run it the way he or she wants to.  I tend to
think that that would lead to a more acrimonious discussion than I prefer
to get into.

It's possible that you've run into a whacko who believes that freedom of
speech is absolute and that everything else is subordinate to that.  If so,
you have the advantage that that construction of free speech has never come
anywhere near to being considered seriously in any case I've heard of.

Of course, as noted at the beginning I am far from being an expert.  If you
want to get the for-sure straight dope on this, you should consult a lawyer.

-jwgh