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.

DIVAmerica's preeminent First Amendment lawyer speaks out on the most controversial free-speech issues of our time/div

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.

The rights guaranteed in the First Amendment—including freedom of expression—are among the fundamental touchstones of our democracy. In Speaking Freely, Floyd Abrams, who for over thirty years has been our most eloquent and respected advocate for uncensored expression, recounts some of the major cases of his remarkable career—landmark trials and Supreme Court arguments that have involved key First Amendment protections.With adversaries as diverse as Richard Nixon and Wayne Newton and allies as unlikely as Kenneth Starr, Abrams takes readers behind the scenes to explain his strategies, the ramifications of each decision, and its long-term significance, presenting a clear and compelling look at the law in action.

In an original and iconoclastic reassessment of the First Amendment, a distinguished political philosopher reaches unorthodox yet compelling conclusions about the place of free speech and religion in the American constitutional order. Revisiting the internal logic of the Amendment's language and the legal culture from which it emerged, Professor David Lowenthal attacks the legacy of Holmes and Brandeis, whose judicial heirs have twisted the First Amendment into a vehicle for degrading and destabilizing the republic it was meant to strengthen and preserve. Professor Lowenthal demonstrates that the framers of the Constitution and Bill of Rights had an understanding of freedom quite different from that to which we have grown accustomed. They saw that freedom without limits degenerates into mere license, itself a threat to freedom, and devised the First Amendment to guarantee the political freedoms requisite for republican self-government. Lowenthal then examines the modern Supreme Court's treatment of revolutionary groups, obscenity, and church-state questions, showing how in each area the Court has been led astray by its fixation on individual rights at the expense of the common good and the health of the republic. -- Amazon.

Americans often believe that the First Amendment and free speech are synonymous and that all restrictions on speech can be addressed by the legal framework of the First Amendment. Political theorist Samuel P. Nelson argues that the current legal framework for free speech actually undermines attempts to resolve many of these issues and that the law of the First Amendment has supplanted the vital politics of free speech. To cut through the confusion, Nelson takes a step back from the First Amendment framework to understand the social nature of speech, moving toward a more pluralistsic and value-based understanding. He examines three philosophies commonly used to justify speech protection—libertarianism, expressivism, and egalitarianism—and finds none of them sufficiently responsive in today's contemporary political landscape. Advocating an approach grounded in value pluralism—which describes a wider variety of free speech claims than the First Amendment allows—Nelson pushes the debate beyond constitutional and legal questions.

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.