Reviews for Freedom for the thought that we hate : a biography of the First Amendment
Publishers Weekly
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
The First Amendment's injunction that "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press" seems cut and dried, but its application has had a vexed history, according to this lucid legal history, Lewis's first book in 15 years (after Make No Law and Gideon's Trumpet). Some suppressions of free speech passed constitutional muster in their day: the 1798 Sedition Act criminalized criticism of the president, and the WWI-era Sedition Act sentenced a minister to 15 years in prison for telling his Bible class that "a Christian can take no part in the war." Law professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning ex-New York Times columnist Lewis explores other First Amendment legal quagmires, including libel law, privacy issues, the press's shielding of confidential sources, obscenity and hate speech. Not quite a free speech absolutist, he's for punishing "speech that urges terrorist violence to an audience... whose members are ready to act." Lewis's story is about the advancement of freedom by the likes of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Louis Brandeis and others whose "bold judicial decisions have made the country what it is." The result is an occasionally stirring account of America's evolving idea of liberty. (Jan. 14) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
A superb history of the First Amendment and the body of law that has followed it. Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and longtime Supreme Court observer Lewis (Make No Law: The Sullivan Case and the First Amendment, 1991, etc.), now retired from the New York Times, explains in the clearest of language how freedom of expression evolved in this country. Surprisingly, it was only in 1919 that a Supreme Court justice (Oliver Wendell Holmes) wrote that the First Amendment protected speech and publication, and that was in a dissent—not until 1931 did a majority on the Court begin enforcing the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech. Drawing examples from many cases, Lewis demonstrates that interpretations of the First Amendment shifted over time as the Supreme Court, and the public, began to recognize that freedom of expression was one of America's basic values. He considers the ways in which freedom can conflict with such other values as the right to privacy, protection from hate speech, the safeguarding of national security and the right to a fair trial (i.e., one uncompromised by prejudicial press coverage). He also explores the evolution of laws against libel here and in Great Britain and reports on the impact of the landmark 1964 case, New York Times v. Sullivan, which ended the press's fear of seditious libel actions and promoted the investigative spirit that led to critical coverage of the Vietnam War and Watergate. Anecdotes abound in this lively, lucid history. Among other choice bits, readers will learn which Supreme Court Justice viewing films for their possibly pornographic content took a law clerk with him to tell him what was happening on the big screen. Timely and important, a work that astonishes and delights as it informs. Copyright ŠKirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.
Freedom of expression is a freedom that Americans take for granted and occasionally abuse. Lewis, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gideon's Trumpet (1964) and New York Times columnist, offers a thoughtful essay on the evolution of the American concept of free speech from the First Amendment through modern challenges to free speech. He notes the dubious beginnings of charges of seditious libel for those who challenged the authority of church or state in England and colonial America and the arduous path to the Constitution and the First Amendment. But the First Amendment was just the beginning of codification of free speech as a long history of challenges, brave defendants, and heroic and not so heroic judges fought over the meaning of freedom of expression. Lewis reviews famous cases, including challenges by Socialist Eugene V. Debs and others espousing political views not in the mainstream, the 1964 libel case of the New York Times v. Sullivan arising out of the civil rights movement, and a host of challenges to the free speech of Nazis and others whose opinions are not always welcome.--Bush, Vanessa Copyright 2007 Booklist
