Timothy E. Cook

Freeing the presses. The First Amendment in action is a scholarly edition of papers presented at the third annually held John Breaux symposium, conducted in March 2003, at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge. In three sections, representing the past, the present and the future, each time three essays are presented together, two, written by distinguished social scientists in the field who were commissioned to write these essays, and a third, acting as an introduction by the presenters / show more commentators at the symposium.

There is a lot of overlap in the essays by the scholars, discussing possible approaches of how freedom of the press might work in theory, in two opposing models, (1) the marketplace of ideas versus (2) the watchdog model. These two models are explored in view of the First Amendment, which makes the whole publication rather specifically pertaining the the American idea of freedom of speech.

Published in 2003, just over a decade ago, as with many such specialized scholarly editions, the tooth of time can be felt. This more so, because contributors specifically refer to the way freedom of speech applies to the media. In 2003, the full development of electronic and especially social media was still to appear on the scene. Therefore, those parts of interest to the general readership are already out of date.

To the specialist reader, the essays describing history, both the past and recent past ("present") still contain interesting descriptions. of the Eighteenth Century press and modern libel law in the USA. show less