Judging Free Speech

Judging Free Speech contains nine original essays by political scientists and law professors, each providing a comprehensive, yet concise and accessible overview of the free speech jurisprudence of a United States Supreme Court Justice.

Free expression is under threat. Social media and fake news, misinformation, and disinformation have prompted governments to propose new forms of regulation that are deeply challenging to free expression. Hate speech, far-right populism, campus speech debates, and censorship consistently make headlines in Canada and abroad. Dilemmas of Free Expression offers forward-looking appraisals of ways to confront challenging moral issues, policy problems, and controversies that pay heed to the fundamental right to free expression. The essays in this volume offer timely analyses of the law, policy, and philosophical challenges, and social repercussions to our understanding of expressive freedom in relation to government obligations and public discourse. Free expression and its limits are multifaceted, deeply complex, inherently values-based, and central to the ability of a society to function. Dilemmas of Free Expression addresses the challenges of limiting free expression across a host of issues through an analyses by leading and emerging voices in a number of disciplines, including political science, law, philosophy, and Indigenous studies.

Most American historians and legal scholars incorrectly assume that controversies and litigation about free speech began abruptly during World War I. However, there was substantial debate about free speech issues between the Civil War and World War I. Important free speech controversies, often involving the activities of sex reformers and labor unions, preceded the Espionage Act of 1917. Scores of legal cases presented free speech issues to Justices Holmes and Brandeis. A significant organization, the Free Speech League, became a principled defender of free expression two decades before the establishment of the ACLU in 1920. World War I produced a major transformation in American liberalism. Progressives who had viewed constitutional rights as barriers to needed social reforms came to appreciate the value of political dissent during its wartime repression. They subsequently misrepresented the prewar judicial hostility to free speech claims and obscured prior libertarian defenses of free speech based on commitments to individual autonomy.

More than any other people on earth, we Americans are free to say and write what we think. The press can air the secrets of government, the corporate boardroom, or the bedroom with little fear of punishment or penalty. This extraordinary freedom results not from America’s culture of tolerance, but from fourteen words in the constitution: the free expression clauses of the First Amendment.InFreedom for the Thought That We Hate, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Anthony Lewis describes how our free-speech rights were created in five distinct areas—political speech, artistic expression, libel, commercial speech, and unusual forms of expression such as T-shirts and campaign spending. It is a story of hard choices, heroic judges, and the fascinating and eccentric defendants who forced the legal system to come face to face with one of America’s great founding ideas.

A user’s guide to understanding contemporary free speech issues in the United States Americans today are confronted by a barrage of questions relating to their free speech freedoms. What are libel laws, and do they need to be changed to stop the press from lying? Does Colin Kaepernick have the right to take a knee? Can Saturday Night Live be punished for parody? While citizens are grappling with these questions, they generally have nowhere to turn to learn about the extent of their First Amendment rights. The Fight for Free Speech answers this call with an accessible, engaging user’s guide to free speech. Media lawyer Ian Rosenberg distills the spectrum of free speech law down to ten critical issues. Each chapter in this book focuses on a contemporary free speech question—from student walkouts for gun safety to Samantha Bee’s expletives, from Nazis marching in Charlottesville to the muting of adult film star Stormy Daniels— and then identifies, unpacks, and explains the key Supreme Court case that provides the answers. Together these fascinating stories create a practical framework for understanding where our free speech protections originated and how they can develop in the future. As people on all sides of the political spectrum are demanding their right to speak and be heard, The Fight for Free Speech is a handbook for combating authoritarianism, protecting our democracy, and bringing an understanding of free speech law to all.

A comprehensive study of proportional analysis in free speech theory, this book challenges US Supreme Court's categorical approach and helps readers understand the breadth of concerns arising from regulations impacting expression.

"Should we tolerate speech designed to spread intolerance? As we grope for a response, we find our constitutional and moral imperatives for tolerance and equality in conflict with the equally imperative value of free speech. This is but one of the many such pressing issues dealt with in this timely, important book." "Exploring the question "What should freedom of speech mean in a democracy?," Rodney Smolla argues that it is a value of overarching significance. Freedom of speech, he says, is not merely an aid to self-governance, but is uniquely connected to all that defines the human spirit--to imagination, creativity, enterprise, rationality, love, worship, and wonder." "In a complex modern society, freedom of speech is constantly threatened by other social interests and values, which often seem more important in the short term: national security, personal reputation and privacy, eliminating racism and sexism, instilling values of decency and tolerance in children, controlling the corrupting influences of money on the political process, and bringing order to global electronic communications--all worthy social interests." "Smolla shows how even seemingly reasonable regulation of speech tends to progress inexorably toward censorship. He takes on the difficult issue of Who Decides, and he analyzes symbolic and violent dissent, and the "clear and present danger" doctrine. He probes the disturbing issues of hate speech, obscenity, tolerating intolerance, and truth and falsehood in political campaigns. He looks at personal confidentiality, ponders the possible criteria for creating an objective definition of newsworthiness and public speech--especially with reference to governmental funding of the arts, education, and broadcasting--and explores the implications of the Noriega case, Persian Gulf censorship issues, attempts to export the American concept of free speech, and the challenge of new technologies." "Throughout, the discussion of pros and cons is balanced, yet Smolla helps us see clearly why we should defend vigorously our endangered First Amendment rights."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved