THE FIGHT FOR FREE SPEECH: Ten Cases That Define Our First Amendment Freedoms, four years on yet could be about century-old norms

THE FIGHT FOR FREE SPEECH: Ten Cases That Define Our First Amendment Freedoms
IAN ROSENBERG
NYU Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$18.95 ebook, available now

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 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.
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