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Shows that while the Supreme Court enforces some First Amendment rights vigorously, it often fails to protect ordinary citizens' expressive freedoms.
The standard account of the First Amendment presupposes that the Supreme Court has consistently expanded the scope of free speech rights over time. This account holds true in some areas, but not in others. In this illuminating work, Ronald J. Krotoszynski, Jr acknowledges that the contemporary Supreme Court rigorously enforces the rules against content and viewpoint discrimination for those who possess the wherewithal to speak but when citizens need the government's assistance to speak - for example, access to public property for protest - free speech rights have declined. Instead of using open-ended balancing tests, the Roberts and Rehnquist Courts have opted for bright line, categorical rules that minimize judicial discretion. Opportunities for democratic engagement could be enhanced, however, if the federal courts returned to the Warren Court's balancing approach and vested federal judges with discretionary authority to require government to assist would-be speakers. This book should be read by anyone concerned with free speech and its place in democratic self-government.
Van Alstyne's casebook provides detailed information on First Amendment law. The casebook provides the tools for fast, easy, on-point research. Part of the University Casebook Series®, it includes selected cases designed to illustrate the development of a body of law on a particular subject. Text and explanatory materials designed for law study accompany the cases.
A lively and controversial overview by the nation's most celebrated First Amendment lawyer of the unique protections for freedom of speech in America The right of Americans to voice their beliefs without government approval or oversight is protected under what may well be the most honored and least understood addendum to the US Constitution--the First Amendment. Floyd Abrams, a noted lawyer and award-winning legal scholar specializing in First Amendment issues, examines the degree to which American law protects free speech more often, more intensely, and more controversially than is the case anywhere else in the world, including democratic nations such as Canada and England. In this lively, powerful, and provocative work, the author addresses legal issues from the adoption of the Bill of Rights through recent cases such as Citizens United. He also examines the repeated conflicts between claims of free speech and those of national security occasioned by the publication of classified material such as was contained in the Pentagon Papers and was made public by WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden.
Defending the First provides a collection of new perspectives on the First Amendment in legal and communication contexts. Editor Joseph Russomanno brings together a roster of major figures who have participated in the shaping of First Amendment law over the past 30 years. Readers are taken into a realm of personal experience and analysis through the stories of these attorneys at the forefront of the battle to defend the "First." The contributors to this volume--all of whom have argued cases before the Supreme Court--tell about their experiences appearing before the highest court in the United States. Some write many years after being there, while others offer insights from a more recent vantage point. One Supreme Court Attorney offers a historical analysis of a case replete with a variety of First Amendment issues. This work contributes to a deeper understanding of First Amendment issues and the types of expression that the First Amendment protects, and why these rights must be protected. In addition, it provides readers with the unique perspective of those who have been on the front lines of some of the most important and influential cases in this era. The challenges of presenting an argument in this venue become clear, and it is evident that understanding one's own case, its lineage, and its likely impact all become part of the formula for success. This distinctive collection provides personal and compelling insights into the making of communication law, and it will be engaging reading for students in communication law courses. It will also appeal to any reader interested in First Amendment law.
No liberty is more vulnerable to the vagaries of the current political climate than freedom of the press.
Since ratification of the First Amendment in the late eighteenth century, there has been a sea change in American life. When the amendment was ratified, individuals were almost completely free of unwanted speech; but today they are besieged by it. Indeed, the First Amendment has, for all practical purposes, been commandeered by the media to justify intrusions of offensive speech into private life. In its application, the First Amendment has become one-sided. Even though America is virtually drowning in speech, the First Amendment only applies to the speaker's delivery of speech. Left out of consideration is the one participant in the communications process who is the most vulnerable and least protected--the helpless recipient of offensive speech. In Rediscovering a Lost Freedom, Patrick Garry addresses what he sees as the most pressing speech problem of the twenty-first century: an often irresponsible media using the First Amendment as a shield behind which to hide its socially corrosive speech. To Garry, the First Amendment should protect the communicative process as a whole. And for this process to be free and open, listeners should have as much right to be free from unwanted speech as speakers do of not being thrown in jail for uttering unpopular ideas. Rediscovering a Lost Freedom seeks to modernize the First Amendment. With other constitutional rights, changed circumstances have prompted changes in the law. Restrictions on political advertising seek to combat the perceived influences of big money; the Second Amendment right to bear arms, due to the prevalence of violence in America, has been curtailed; and the Equal Protection clause has been altered to permit affirmative action programs aimed at certain racial and ethnic groups. But when it comes to the flood of violent and vulgar media speech, there has been no change in First Amendment doctrines. This work proposes a government-facilitated private right to censor. Rediscovering a Lost Freedom will be of interest to students of American law, history, and the U.S. Constitution.
A crucial and compelling account of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, the landmark Supreme Court case that redefined libel, from the Pulitzer Prize–winning legal journalist Anthony Lewis. The First Amendment puts it this way: "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." Yet, in 1960, a city official in Montgomery, Alabama, sued The New York Times for libel—and was awarded $500,000 by a local jury—because the paper had published an ad critical of Montgomery's brutal response to civil rights protests. The centuries of legal precedent behind the Sullivan case and the U.S. Supreme Court's historic reversal of the original verdict are expertly chronicled in this gripping and wonderfully readable book by the Pulitzer Prize Pulitzer Prize–winning legal journalist Anthony Lewis. It is our best account yet of a case that redefined what newspapers—and ordinary citizens—can print or say.
The First Amendment is perhaps the most important - and most debated - amendment in the US Constitution. It establishes freedom of speech, as well as that of religion, the press, peaceable assembly and the right to petition the government. But how has the interpretation of this amendment evolved? Milton Cantor explores America's political response to the challenges of social unrest and how it shaped the meaning of the First Amendment throughout the twentieth century. This multi-layered study of dissent in the United States from the early 1900s through the 1970s describes how Congress and the law dealt with anarchists, syndicalists, socialists, and militant labor groups, as well as communists and left-of-center liberals. Cantor describes these organizations' practices, policies, and policy shifts against the troubled background of war and overseas affairs. The volume chronologically explores each new challenge - both events and legislation - for the First Amendment and how the public and branches of government reacted. The meaning of the First Amendment was defined in the crucible of threats to national security. Some perceived threats were wartime events; the First World War instigated awareness of civil liberties, but in those times, security trumped liberty. In the peace that followed, efforts to curtail speech continued to prevail. Cantor analyzes the decades-long divisiveness regarding First Amendment decisions in the Supreme Court, coming down squarely in criticism of those who have argued for greater government control over speech.