The Free Speech Century

By: Geoffrey R. Stone - edited by, Lee C. Bollinger - edited by

Narrated by: David de Vries

The Supreme Court's 1919 decision in Schenck vs. the United States is one of the most important free speech cases in American history. Written by Oliver Wendell Holmes, it is most famous for first invoking the phrase "clear and present danger". Although the decision upheld the conviction of an individual for criticizing the draft during World War I, it also laid the foundation for our nation's robust protection of free speech. Over time, the standard Holmes devised made freedom of speech in America a reality rather than merely an ideal.

In The Free Speech Century, two of America's leading First Amendment scholars, Lee C. Bollinger and Geoffrey R. Stone, have gathered a group of the nation's leading constitutional scholars to evaluate the evolution of free speech doctrine since Schenk and to assess where it might be headed in the future.

Publishing on the 100th anniversary of the decision that laid the foundation for America's free speech tradition, The Free Speech Century will serve as an essential resource for anyone interested in how our understanding of the First Amendment transformed over time and why it is so critical both for the United States and for the world today.

©2019 Oxford University Press (P)2019 Tantor

My Thoughts On This Book

I liked this book quie a bit. It taught me pretty much how things are adjudicated in today's courts. It covers a whde variety of ways in which our FirstAmendment is used and/or abused. It also helped me understand some of today's decisions that we thought should have gone in another direction. I would recommend this book to anyone who is a proponent of the 1st Amendment.Itmight give a different perspective ofit.