JULIE HILDEN The Supreme Court's Recent Child Pornography Decision, and the Problem with Narrowly Construing Statutes with First Amendment Implications: Part One in a Two-Part Series In Part One in a two-part series of columns, FindLaw columnist, attorney, and author Julie Hilden discusses the Supreme Court's recent 7-2 decision to uphold a federal statute that criminalizes offering or seeking child pornography. Hilden expresses qualms about the Court's decision to interpret the broad statute narrowly, rather than striking it down -- arguing that this kind of interpretation allows Congress to rely too heavily on the Court to do what Congress should have done in the first place. She also contends that, although it is a well-established rule that the Court may choose to construe a statute in a way that avoids constitutional issues, the specific context here -- of a criminal statute with First Amendment applications -- makes application of that rule especially problematic.