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Ideas of the First Amendment

Ideas of the First Amendment

Ideas of the First Amendment is organized for a course centered on the leading thinkers in the tradition, the brilliant and colorful dissenters, political leaders, and judges who collectively gave us the First Amendment as we know it, while covering each of the conventional doctrinal First Amendment topics. Topics covered in Ideas of the First Amendment include: advocacy of revolution, libel, obscenity, campaign finance, hate speech, internet regulation, the public forum, subsidies, fighting words, compelled speech and association, publishing classified documents, flagburning, commercial speech, indecency, free speech in wartime.

Freedom of speech in the history of ideas : landmark cases, historic essays, and recent developments

"[This book] s organized around six historic essays about the freedom of speech by James Madison, John Stuart Mill, Judge Learned Hand, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Justice Louis Brandeis, and Alexander Meiklejohn. For the most part, these classic essays advance 'instrumental' claims about how free speech serves social goods such as political legitimacy and responsiveness, the development of new knowledge and better understanding, societal adaptation to changing conditions, and the checking of abuses of power. Both the classic and the contemporary individual-centered arguments can be better understood by applying them to specific issues of First Amendment interpretation. Accordingly, this book includes virtually all of the landmark Supreme Court cases construing the speech and press clauses of the First Amendment, plus several major decisions of the last decade that have the potential to become landmark precedents."--This special Concise Edition of the Ideas of the First Amendment casebook provides teaching materials that serve well in settings other than a 3 or 4 hour law school course on the First Amendment, which is what the casebook originally was designed for and continues to be used in. One such setting is a law school seminar on the freedom of speech that focuses on the most important recent cases. A second setting is an introductory undergraduate or journalism school course on the First Amendment. The First Amendment decisions of the Roberts Court represent an unusual teaching opportunity because so many of the majority opinions and the dissents they have provoked are driven by strong views, often brilliantly argued, regarding fundamental principles. For that reason, a basic familiarity with the history of ideas regarding the freedom of speech is an essential predicate for the study of recent developments. This casebook emphasizes both the classic writings on the subject and the richness of argumentation in the contemporary disputes, both of which engage at the level of fundamental principles. This emphasis combined with the book's manageable length makes it more suitable for law school seminars and courses in other departments than First Amendment casebooks that are designed for introductory law school courses.