|
Loading... Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendmentby Anthony Lewis
None. This book is a decent overview of 1st Amendment cases throughout history in the United States. It doesn't go terribly deep into things most of the time but it was interesting to see how things progressed over time.  walterqchocobo | Apr 8, 2013 |  A solid history of the issues involving the First Amendment since its inception, and one that is extremely readable. The author writes in a lucid style, without a lot of excess verbiage, and gives the basic details of how jurisprudence surrounding the freedom of speech and the press has evolved. He talks about some of the challenges to First Amendment guarantees, starting with the Sedication Act passed by our second president, John Adams, and continues right up through the George W. Bush administration (though he does not cover the PATRIOT Act, a real downside). He examines the efforts to limit the first amendment to only cover speech that everyone finds acceptable, and gives his own interpretation in many places. He spends a chapter on hate speech, one of the current challenges to first amendment rights. One weakness of the book is the failure to discuss the Comstock laws, a long-lasting and significant challenge to speech and press freedom. Otherwise, a good basic primer, especially for someone just beginning to get interested in this issue. (  ) quantum_flapdoodle | Apr 7, 2012 | Lewis, the author of the terrific Gideon's Trumpet, among other legal books, presents an overview of issues, cases, and trends involving the First Amendment. When I was in law school, I always thought that cases involving the First Amendment were difficult, often with more than one party having a compelling argument, but they had interesting facts. This book is geared to the non-attorney and is not at all technical. It gets into a lot of interesting First Amendment subjects. Not just freedom of speech, freedom of the press, or freedom of association, but also such topics as obscenity (including the infamous legal line "I know it when I see it"), censorship, hate speech, flagburning, and campaign financing limits. Unfortunately, the book is from 2007 because I would have loved to have read Lewis' take on more recent First Amendment cases, such as the Citizens United case (applying the First Amendment to corporations) from earlier this year. Overall, though, I would highly recommend this book. (  )5  lindapanzo | Jun 8, 2010 | no reviews | add a review
References to this work on external resources.
|
 Google Books — Loading...Popular covers   RatingAverage: (3.79)
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Wikipedia in English (4)
6