Ian Rosenberg

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: 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 show more 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.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: A book from 2021 that enumerates the right to free speech busily being attacked, restricted, breached, and ignored in 2025.

Never in my lifetime have I seen such a rapid destruction of a Constitutional right. Read this to understand, in meticulously stated detail, what it is that we are seeing ripped away from us. It should not feel, as it is meant to be a warning, as though it is discussing a Golden Age now dimmed by having cartloads of ordure heaped all over it.

The twenty examples of the defense and delineation chosen by Author Rosenberg demonstrate in accessible non-weapons-grade prose show the flexibility of and the necessity for its existence. We allow further erosions and floutings at our greatest, personal peril. show less

I'll give thumbs up to most anything that preaches to the importance of the freedom of speech, and this book touches on a lot of exciting topics in that regard. But at the same time, be aware that this graphic adaptation of the author's The Fight for Free Speech: Ten Cases That Define Our First Amendment Freedoms is a text-heavy slog. Soooo many lawyers and judges are crammed into the pages as cursorily drawn talking heads spouting leaden balloons of legalese from cases going back decades, a show more century even, that still hold sway over what free speech means today.

The art doesn't do much to make the material dynamic. Many of the images, especially the ones obviously referenced from Google searches, are just copied and pasted from page to page, so we often get to see the exact same talking head two or three times. The panels that aren't portraits look like they could be drawn from a stock image database or a high school kid's first PowerPoint presentation.

Still, important topic and lots of good information. show less

Ian Rosenberg and Mike Cavallaro’s Free Speech Handbook: A Practical Framework for Understanding Our Free Speech Protections uses the graphic novel format to examine Supreme Court cases related to the First Amendment. Rosenberg and Cavallaro often use current events as introductions to examine the underlying case law and how it developed from inciting incidents, worked through the lower courts, and eventually faced SCOTUS. They break down these complicated histories into digestible events, show more reminding the reader that, for all the complicated legalese in these cases, they involved real people facing real threats to their free speech. Rosenberg and Cavallaro’s examples cover the right to advocate for illegal action, the right not to speak, the right to criticize public figures, the right to nondisruptive protest in school, the right to offend, the right to publish without being stopped, the absence of a right to curse on broadcast television and radio, the right to parody, the right to espouse thoughts people hate, and the right to use social media as a public forum. This text would work well in a high school civics class or an introductory political science course for college students. show less

Mostly Solid Explanation of What 'Free Speech' Means As Decreed By SCOTUS... And What It Does Not. This is a legal treatise that never once explicitly states the very thing it seeks to define - the particular text of the First Amendment to the US Constitution that reads "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.". It also refers to a famous yet show more apocryphal "Ben Franklin" quote in its introduction. And yet despite these two flaws, it is still a mostly solid look at what the Supreme Court of the United States of America has decreed "the right to free speech" means over the last nearly 250 years, mostly within the last century or so. The book does a solid job of using an example usually from this Millenium (or even decade) as its starting point for each chapter's discussion, then going into the history and actual SCOTUS decisions, what they said, and what they mean. Including showing the *rest* of the famous ruling that "you can't yell fire in a crowded theater". Well, you can. If there is a fire. ;) And if you're interested in the concept of Free Speech in the US for any reason at all, this is a book you'll want to read. Very much recommended. show less