The First Amendment, Freedom of Speech: Its Constitutional History and the Contemporary Debate (Bill of Rights) - Softcover
Inhaltsangabe
This volume collects, edits and presents some of the most important classic and cutting-edge thinking on the constitutional freedom of speech. Students of law, political science, or any other person interested in understanding the basics of American self-government will be able to see the important themes, values, conflicts, and possible resolutions concerning this, our most cherished, democratic freedom.
Editor Vikram David Amar has organized the collection into three major sections: historical foundations, theoretical paradigms, and selected doctrinal battlegrounds. Within this framework, he has selected some of the most significant works that address these various themes, including: William Blackstone’s classic "Commentaries on the Laws of England" (1769) and Zacharia Chaffee’s timeless essay "Free Speech in War Time" (1919), as well as works from more contemporary constitutional giants such as Cass Sunstein’s "Free Speech Now" (1992), Alexander Meiklejohn’s "The First Amendment is an Absolute" (1961), Kathleen Sullivan’s "Political Money and Freedom of Speech" (1997), and many more influential articles.
At a time when America is trying to export democracy abroad and preserve it at home against a backdrop of international security concerns, figuring out how society should permit its citizens to identify and represent themselves and come together to deliberate collectively is arguably more crucial now than ever before.
Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.
Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor
Vikram David Amar is professor of law at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of many books and articles on law including Constitutional Law: Cases and Materials (with William Cohen and Jonathan D. Varat), 12th edition, and Federal Practice and Procedure, Jurisdiction 3D, Vols. 17, 17A, and 17B (with Charles A. Wright, Arthur R. Miller, and Edward H. Cooper). He authors a biweekly online column on constitutional matters for Findlaw.com, the most frequently visited Web site devoted to legal matters.
Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.
The First Amendment FREEDOM OF SPEECH
Its Constitutional History and the Contemporary DebatePrometheus Books
Copyright © 2009 Vikram David AmarAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-59102-632-7
Contents
Series Editor's Preface David B. Oppenheimer.............................................................................................................................9Introduction. Guided Tour.................................................................................................................................................13PART I. HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONSCommentaries on the Laws of England Sir William Blackstone...............................................................................................................23Free Speech in War Time Zechariah Chafee Jr..............................................................................................................................25Righting the Balance: An Inquiry into the Foundations and Limits of Freedom of Expression Steven J. Heyman...............................................................32Seditious Libel and the Lost Guarantee of Freedom of Expression William T. Mayton........................................................................................50The Origins of the Press Clause David A. Anderson........................................................................................................................65PART II. THEORETICAL PARADIGMSMust Speech Be Special? Frederick Schauer................................................................................................................................85Free Speech Now Cass R. Sunstein.........................................................................................................................................100Scope of the First Amendment: Freedom of Speech C. Edwin Baker...........................................................................................................115The First Amendment Is an Absolute Alexander Meiklejohn..................................................................................................................125Equality as a Central Principle in the First Amendment Kenneth L. Karst..................................................................................................141PART III. SELECTED DOCTRINAL BATTLEGROUNDSContent Regulation and the First Amendment Geoffrey R. Stone.............................................................................................................153Rules of Engagement for Cultural Wars: Regulating Conduct, Unprotected Speech, and Protected Expression in Anti-Abortion Protests Alan E. Brownstein.....................179The Concept of the Public Forum Harry Kalven Jr..........................................................................................................................192The Case of the Missing Amendments: R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul Akhil Reed Amar...........................................................................................198Public Response to Racist Speech: Considering the Victim's Story Mari J. Matsuda.........................................................................................214Compelled Subsidization of Speech: Johanns v. Livestock Marketing Association Robert Post................................................................................233Political Money and Freedom of Speech Kathleen M. Sullivan...............................................................................................................251From Watergate to Ken Starr: Potter Stewart's "Or of the Press" a Quarter Century Later Vikram David Amar................................................................272APPENDIXESConstitution of the United States of America..............................................................................................................................279The Amendments to the Constitution........................................................................................................................................295
Introduction
Guided Tour
Free speech in America, while enshrined in the First Amendment and often described as occupying a "preferred position" in the Constitution's constellation of rights, has not always been respected in practice. At the nation's founding, some read the First Amendment quite narrowly, arguing that it prohibited before-the-fact injunctions against speech-so-called prior restraints-but no more. Just a few years after the Constitution was ratified, Congress enacted the self-dealing Sedition Act of 1798, which allowed congressional incumbents to criticize their challengers but prohibited challengers from criticizing incumbents. (Because the act sought to punish the government's critics after the fact of speech rather than silence them before they spoke, its supporters argued that the statute didn't run afoul of the First Amendment.)
Remarkably, this act was never judicially invalidated (and indeed was enforced by Supreme Court justices riding circuit as lower court judges) but was, as Justice William Brennan observed in the famous New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964), ultimately repudiated by the "court of history." But this repudiation was late in coming and did not prevent broad suppression of the most vital political speech imaginable throughout the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century.
For example, antebellum states aggressively attempted to silence slavery critics in the mid 1800s, just as Congress had tried to silence its critics fifty years earlier. As Yale law professor Akhil Amar has observed:
[a]cross the South, mere criticism of slavery became a crime, and the Republican Party was in effect outlawed via the threat of after-the-fact punishment rather than prior restraint. In response, Republicans insisted on broad protections of expression. Their 1856 party slogan was "Free Speech, Free Press, Free Men, Free Labor, Free Territory, and Fremont." Fremont lost in 1856, but four years later Lincoln won. And the war came. In its wake, Reconstruction Republicans insisted that the South end its regime of antirepublican (and anti-Republican) censorship of opposition speech. Free folk-black and white, male and female, Republican and Democrat, Northern and Southern-must all be guaranteed the right to speak their minds about interlinked issues of law, politics, religion, morality, and even literature. (Reconstruction Republicans viscerally understood the importance of protecting a literary work like Uncle Tom's Cabin.) The Fourteenth Amendment thus commanded that all states observe citizens' fundamental rights and freedoms, with a broad right of free expression, ranging far beyond freedom from prior restraint, at the Amendment's very core.
Even with this reconstruction revolution, federal courts were slow to respond favorably to speech claimants. After having stood by while Southern states effectively criminalized the antebellum Republican Party, federal courts for more than half a century after the Civil War refused to implement the "incorporation" of the First Amendment against the states that the Fourteenth Amendment clearly commanded. And when in 1907 the Supreme Court assumed for the sake of argument that incorporation existed, it did so only to insist that freedom of expression was limited to freedom from prior restraint and thus permitted state judges to fine a newspaper publisher who politically satirized the very judges in question. A dozen years later,...
„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.