Read complete books and articles on: Free Speech

Speech, Freedom Of - liberty to speak and otherwise express oneself and one's opinions. Like freedom of the press (see press, freedom of the), which pertains to the publication of speech, freedom of speech itself has been absolute in no time or place. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution bars the federal government from "abridging the freedom of speech"; since the 1920s the

Although speech is freer in the United States than in many societies, federal and state laws do restrict many kinds of expression. Some kinds of speech regarded as damaging to individual interests (e.g., libel and slander) are limited primarily by the threat of tort action; other forms of speech (e.g., obscenity) are restricted by law because they are regarded as damaging to society as a whole. Speech that is regarded as disruptive of public order has long been beyond protection (e.g., "fighting words" that cause a breach of the peace or false statements that cause general panic). The government also limits speech that threatens it directly; although sedition laws are rarely prosecuted in the United States, such rationales as a danger to "national security" have been invoked to silence criticism of or opposition to the government. Laws designed to silence opposition to organized religion (e.g., laws against blasphemy or heresy), common in some other countries, would run afoul of the First Amendment.

In recent decades speech controversies in the United States have involved, among other issues, whether and how "hate speech" directed at racial or other groups can be suppressed and what limitations may be imposed on speech in an attempt to combat sexual harassment. The definition of speech itself has been broadened to encompass "symbolic speech," which consists of actions that express opinions; thus, U.S. courts have held that burning the American flag as a protest is protected speech.

Show Excerpt Only

16 of the Best Books and Articles on: Free Speech

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

Free Expression in America: A Documentary History » Read Now
by Sheila Suess Kennedy. 344 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

Freedom of speech is a foundational principle of the American Constitutional system. This collection of over 100 primary documents from a variety of sources will help students understand exactly what is meant by "free speech," and how it has evolved since the founding of our country. Court cases...
Read More

Freedom of speech is a foundational principle of the American Constitutional system. This collection of over 100 primary documents from a variety of sources will help students understand exactly what is meant by "free speech," and how it has evolved since the founding of our country. Court cases, opinion pieces, and many other documents bring to life the tension between America's constitutional commitment to robust and unrestrained discourse and recurring efforts to suppress expression deemed dangerous, degrading or obscene. Explanatory introductions to each document aid users in understanding the various arguments put forth in debates over exactly how to define the Constitution to encourage readers to consider all sides when drawing their own conclusions.
Show less
2.

The Future of Free Speech Law » Read Now
by R. George Wright. 276 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

This book considers the free speech issues associated with matters as diverse as the use of racial epithets, flag burning, obscenity, and speech by public employees, public school students, and public school teachers. The author argues persuasively that free speech law has become unnecessarily...
Read More

This book considers the free speech issues associated with matters as diverse as the use of racial epithets, flag burning, obscenity, and speech by public employees, public school students, and public school teachers. The author argues persuasively that free speech law has become unnecessarily complex and that free speech protection has been extended well beyond the bounds suggested by the various reasons for protecting speech in the first place. These developments, he suggests, risk an eventual weakening of the public commitment to free speech as a fundamental value.
Show less
3.

Hate Speech, Sex Speech, Free Speech » Read Now
by Nicholas Wolfson. 169 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

A powerful indictment of contemporary attacks on free speech, this book argues for a vigorous First Amendment jurisprudence protecting even offensive types of speech. In recent years, political activists, academics, and legal specialists have attacked traditional notions of free speech protection as...
Read More

A powerful indictment of contemporary attacks on free speech, this book argues for a vigorous First Amendment jurisprudence protecting even offensive types of speech. In recent years, political activists, academics, and legal specialists have attacked traditional notions of free speech protection as they concern hate speech, obscenity, and pornography. They have called for changes in Supreme Court doctrine in defining the First Amendment and have argued that the traditional view of free speech actually creates and perpetuates a society in which the weak--women, minorities, the poor--have no voice. While recognizing their fears, Nicholas Wolfson argues that it is impossible to separate "bad" speech from "good" speech without fatally compromising the uniquely American concept of free speech, and that efforts to modify our concept of free speech for a greater egalitarian good can only result in undue state influence over private speech. In a keenly argued analysis, he finds that, in the end, the preservation of free and vigorous speech requires a strong First Amendment protection for even the most hateful of speech.
Show less
4.

Sex/Gender Outsiders, Hate Speech, and Freedom of Expression: Can They Say That about Me? » Read Now
by Martha T. Zingo. 219 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

Zingo examines the conflicts inherent in restricting hate speech--the controversial speech codes--and freedom of expression as it affects the lives and rights of gay men and lesbians. While much has been written on speech code restrictions having to do with race and gender, both in the press and...
Read More

Zingo examines the conflicts inherent in restricting hate speech--the controversial speech codes--and freedom of expression as it affects the lives and rights of gay men and lesbians. While much has been written on speech code restrictions having to do with race and gender, both in the press and academic literature, few before Zingo have focused on these codes and sexual orientation/preference.
Show less
5.

Critiquing Free Speech: First Amendment Theory and the Challenge of Interdisciplinarity » Read Now
by Matthew D. Bunker. 206 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

In this exceptional volume, Matthew D. Bunker explores the work of contemporary free speech critics and argues that, while at times these critics provide important lessons, many of their conclusions must be rejected. Moreover, Bunker suggests that we be wary of interdisciplinary approaches to free...
Read More

In this exceptional volume, Matthew D. Bunker explores the work of contemporary free speech critics and argues that, while at times these critics provide important lessons, many of their conclusions must be rejected. Moreover, Bunker suggests that we be wary of interdisciplinary approaches to free speech theory that--by their very assumptions and techniques--are a poor "fit" with existing free speech theory and doctrine. In his investigation of diverse critiques of free speech theory and his sophisticated rebuttal, he provides an innovative and important examination of First Amendment theory. In doing so, he establishes a new agenda for First Amendment theory scholarship that incorporates some of the critics' insights without abandoning the best aspects of the free speech tradition. COPY FOR MAILER: Distinctive features in this volume include: * an overview of the traditional approaches to First Amendment theory, * an examination of work from key First Amendment scholars and theorists, at both the individual and group level, * an emphasis on interdisciplinarity ranging from femi- nist and critical legal scholars to economists and literary theorists, and * a new agenda for First Amendment theory scholar- ship which incorporates critical comment while pre- serving the best aspects of the free speech tradition.
Show less
6.

Hate Speech, Pornography, and the Radical Attack on Free Speech Doctrine » Read Now
by James Weinstein. 284 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

James Weinstein is Amella Lewis Professor of Constitutional Law at Arizona State University College of Law.
7.

Group Defamation and Freedom of Speech: The Relationship between Language and Violence » Read Now
by Monroe H. Freedman, Eric M. Freedman. 374 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

This volume, an updated collection of essays from a Hofstra University conference on group defamation, provides a cross-disciplinary examination of hate speech. Beginning with the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in R.A.V. v. St. Paul, the volume analyzes the problem from historical...
Read More

This volume, an updated collection of essays from a Hofstra University conference on group defamation, provides a cross-disciplinary examination of hate speech. Beginning with the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in R.A.V. v. St. Paul, the volume analyzes the problem from historical, anthropological, comparative-legal, and American constitutional law perspectives.
Show less
8.

Words That Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech, and the First Amendment » Read Now
by Mari J. Matsuda, Charles R. Lawrence III, Richard Delgado, Kimberle Williams Crenshaw. 160 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...Surely, they argued, the danger to free speech and intellectual debate that would...came to the courts as a case about free speech and shows us that much more is...being...
9.

Free Expression in the Age of the Internet: Social and Legal Boundaries » Read Now
by Jeremy Harris Lipschultz. 331 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

Jeremy Harris Lipschultz is communication graduate chair and associate professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
10.

Freedom of Speech: Words Are Not Deeds » Read Now
by Harry M. Bracken. 164 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

This work provides a philosophical framework within which the free speech clause of the Constitution's First Amendment may be understood. While much has been written on the First Amendment, this work is unique in offering an historically based thesis illuminating a point virtually ignored in the...
Read More

This work provides a philosophical framework within which the free speech clause of the Constitution's First Amendment may be understood. While much has been written on the First Amendment, this work is unique in offering an historically based thesis illuminating a point virtually ignored in the literature--the absolutist quality of the free speech clause and the philosophical dualism (words/deeds) on which it is based. Given the increasingly powerful forces favoring group rights in order to generate laws which would silence "offensive" speech, this book provides a radical challenge to the frameworks within which many such contemporary arguments are cast. It also reminds putative censors of the very special role free speech plays in any democratic community which aims to be self-governing.
Show less
11.

The Right to Protest: The Basic ACLU Guide to Free Expression » Read Now
by Joel M. Gora, David Goldberger, Gary M. Stern, Morton H. Halperin. 348 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...these constitutional rights to free speech and explaining how they sharply...Similarly, the combined rights of free speech, free press, and free assembly...constitutional...
12.

Free Speech and the Politics of Identity » Read Now
by David A. J. Richards. 280 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

Free Speech and the Politics of Identity challenges the scholarly view as well as the dominant legal view outside the United States that the right of free speech may reasonably be traded off in pursuit of justice to stigmatized minorities. These views appeal to an alleged reasonable balance between...
Read More

Free Speech and the Politics of Identity challenges the scholarly view as well as the dominant legal view outside the United States that the right of free speech may reasonably be traded off in pursuit of justice to stigmatized minorities. These views appeal to an alleged reasonable balance between two basic human rights: the right of free speech and the right against unjust discrimination. Compelling arguments of normative political theory and interpretative history show, however, that these rights are structurally linked: the abridgement of one compromises the other. To make this case, David Richards offers an original political theory of toleration and of structural injustice that addresses the nature and scope of the right of free speech and the right against unjust discrimination; its analytic focus is on the role played by members of subordinated groups in the protest of the terms of structural injustice (the politics of identity), advancing constitutional justice under law. While the argument is developed on the basis of American constitutional experience from the antebellum period forward, its normative force is brought to bear both in defending and criticizing some aspects of American law and in challenging the continuing legitimacy of laws against group libel, obscenity, and blasphemy under national legal systems (including Germany, France, Britain, Canada, Israel, India, South Africa, and others), regional systems (the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights), and public international law. The book's innovative normative and interpretative methodology calls for a new departure in comparative public law, in which all states responsibly address their common problems not only of inadequate protection of free speech but correlative failure to take seriously the continuing political power of such evils as anti-Semitism, racism, sexism, and homophobia.
Show less
13.

Freedom of Speech on Private Property » Read Now
by Warren Freedman. 172 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

"The author offers an extensive survey of the most important court decisions that have attempted to delineate the rights of those who want to express their views and those who want to control access to private property. Among the other topics discussed are commercial speech, political advertising...
Read More

"The author offers an extensive survey of the most important court decisions that have attempted to delineate the rights of those who want to express their views and those who want to control access to private property. Among the other topics discussed are commercial speech, political advertising, picketing, and pornography. Extensively documented; it contains a selected bibliography, a subject index, and a case index. Written with a legal audience in mind, but may be read with profit by others interested in the topic. For upper levels." Choice
Show less
14.

Outspoken: Free Speech Stories » Read Now
by Nan Levinson. 359 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

""Outspoken is heartwarming and inspiring, as it reminds us that there are people who refuse to be cowed into obedience, who maintain their resistance to war and injustice against all odds."--Howard Zinn, author of "A People's History of the United States
"Nan Levinson, herself one of this nation's...
Read More

""Outspoken is heartwarming and inspiring, as it reminds us that there are people who refuse to be cowed into obedience, who maintain their resistance to war and injustice against all odds."--Howard Zinn, author of "A People's History of the United States
"Nan Levinson, herself one of this nation's free speech heroes, brings the First Amendment to life by telling the stories of those who have fought for the freedom we so often take for granted, but that is increasingly under attack. This book shows in funny, tragic, and lurid detail why the freedom of speech is worth fighting for."--David Cole, author of "No Equal Justice
"Levinson's book couldn't come at a more important time. These compelling tales are increasingly relevant now that our civil liberties are being threatened in the name of 'national security.' "Outspoken should be required reading for anyone interested in preserving the freedom we've come to take for granted in the United States."--Candida Royalle, Erotic film director and President, Femme Productions, Inc.
"In this imaginative and highly readable examination of dozens of provocative First Amendment controversies, Nan Levinson establishes herself as a resolute student of the role of free speech in a democratic society. This is an exceptional book about an endlessly important subject."--James O. Freedman, President Emeritus, Dartmouth College
Show less
15.

The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s » Read Now
by Robert Cohen, Reginald E. Zelnik. 618 pgs.

Collections: History, Education, Entire Library

This is the authoritative and long-awaited volume on Berkeley's celebrated Free Speech Movement (FSM) of 1964. Drawing from the experiences of many movement veterans, this collection of scholarly articles and personal memoirs illuminates in fresh ways one of the most important events in the recent...
Read More

This is the authoritative and long-awaited volume on Berkeley's celebrated Free Speech Movement (FSM) of 1964. Drawing from the experiences of many movement veterans, this collection of scholarly articles and personal memoirs illuminates in fresh ways one of the most important events in the recent history of American higher education. The contributors--whose perspectives range from that of FSM leader Mario Savio to University of California president Clark Kerr---shed new light on such issues as the origins of the FSM in the civil rights movement, the political tensions within the FSM, the day-to-day dynamics of the protest movement, the role of the Berkeley faculty and its various factions, the 1965 trial of the arrested students, and the virtually unknown "little Free Speech Movement of 1966."
Show less
16.

The Cloistered Virtue: Freedom of Speech and the Administration of Justice in the Western World » Read Now
by Barend Van Niekerk. 399 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

Foreword by John Dugard Eulogy for Professor Barend Van Niekerk by Dr. Alan Paton Preface Introduction The Concept of Freedom of Speech in the Legal Domain and its Premises The Formal Restrictions on Legal Free Speech: The Protection of the Prestige and Standing of Legal Officers and of the...
Read More

Foreword by John Dugard Eulogy for Professor Barend Van Niekerk by Dr. Alan Paton Preface Introduction The Concept of Freedom of Speech in the Legal Domain and its Premises The Formal Restrictions on Legal Free Speech: The Protection of the Prestige and Standing of Legal Officers and of the Administration of Justice Trial Publicity Restrictions Informal Restrictions and Indirect Sanctions on Free Speech in the Legal Domain Conclusion: The Unending Struggle Notes Afterword: Freedom of Speech and the Administration of Justice--Recent Developments by Gilbert Marcus Index
Show less