More than any other people on earth, Americans are free to say and write
what they think. The media can air the secrets of the White House, the
boardroom, or the bedroom with little fear of punishment or penalty. The
reason for this extraordinary freedom is not a superior culture of
tolerance, but just 14 words in our most fundamental legal document: the
free expression clauses of the First Amendment to the Constitution.
In Lewis' telling, the story of how the right of free expression evolved
along with our nation makes a compelling case for the adaptability of
our constitution. Although Americans have gleefully and sometimes
outrageously exercised their right to free speech since before the
nation's founding, the Supreme Court did not begin to recognize this
right until 1919. Freedom of speech and the press as we know it today is
surprisingly recent.
Anthony Lewis tells us how these rights were created, revealing a story
of hard choices, heroic (and some less heroic) judges, and fascinating
and eccentric defendants who forced the legal system to come
face-to-face with one of America's great founding ideas.
