The Soul of the First Amendment

A lively and controversial overview by the nation’s most celebrated First Amendment lawyer of the unique protections for freedom of speech in America

The right of Americans to voice their beliefs without government approval or oversight is protected under what may well be the most honored and least understood addendum to the US Constitution—the First Amendment. Floyd Abrams, a noted lawyer and award-winning legal scholar specializing in First Amendment issues, examines the degree to which American law protects free speech more often, more intensely, and more controversially than is the case anywhere else in the world, including democratic nations such as Canada and England. In this lively, powerful, and provocative work, the author addresses legal issues from the adoption of the Bill of Rights through recent cases such as Citizens United. He also examines the repeated conflicts between claims of free speech and those of national security occasioned by the publication of classified material such as was contained in the Pentagon Papers and was made public by WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden.
 

• Free Speech on Campus
• Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment
• Free Speech Beyond Words: The Surprising Reach of the First Amendment
• The Free Speech Century
• On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
• HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship (Inalienable Rights)
• Uninhibited, Robust, and Wide-Open: A Free Press for a New Century (INALIENABLE RIGHTS)
• Do I Make Myself Clear?: Why Writing Well Matters
• The Administrative Threat (Encounter Intelligence)
• Sex and the Constitution: Sex, Religion, and Law from America's Origins to the Twenty-First Century