Floyd Abrams was invited to say a few words about his latest book Friend of the Court: On the Front Lines with the First Amendment (Yale University Press, 2013). His comments are set forth below. When one tries to determine which of his articles, speeches, testimony, letters, reviews and the like over a 45-year period […]
Tag Archives | Free Speech
Floyd Abrams & the First Amendment: The Risks of Liberty
Here is the last installment before Mr. Abrams’s post. Thanks to Eugene for having me and thanks to all for the comments (critical ones included) from your readers. RC “Our approach under the First Amendment has wisely, I think, generally been to risk suffering the harm that speech may do in order to avoid the […]
Floyd Abrams & the First Amendment: Enter Alex Bickel
Sometimes Fortuna deals a hand that forever changes the arc of one’s life. And so it was when Floyd Abrams met a remarkable man from Romania. After graduating from Cornell in 1956, Floyd Abrams ventured to New Haven to study law at Yale Law School, home of many renowned constitutional law scholars. Once there, Abrams […]
Floyd Abrams & the First Amendment: Nuance & Absolutism
Prior to Nuanced Absolutism I had known Floyd Abrams for years, but largely in a professional capacity as a colleague in the First Amendment community. When my book The Fundamental Holmes: A Free Speech Chronicle and Reader. (Cambridge University Press, 2010) came out, I sent him a copy. He read it and replied with a […]
Private Religious Colleges and Free Speech
By Greg Lukianoff, guest-blogging on November 1, 2012 10:38 am in First Amendment, Freedom of Association, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Speech at Colleges and Universities
I have been guest blogging this week, and Eugene asked me to reserve some of my posts to respond to reader comments. From the moment that Eugene announced I would be posting, a few commenters have decided that the single most important thing FIRE should actually be fighting is the scourge of censorship-happy Christian colleges. […]
Only a Few Examples of Censorship on Campus?
By Greg Lukianoff, guest-blogging on October 31, 2012 6:10 pm in First Amendment, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Speech at Colleges and Universities
A few commenters on my latest post for The Volokh Conspiracy have been riffing on the theme that the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE, where I work) is only able to show a few examples of censorship on campus, and therefore it must not be that big of a problem. Here’s my erudite […]