The Fight for Free Speech: Ten Cases That Define Our First Amendment Freedoms

Media attorney Rosenberg offers an accessible explanation of the right to free speech, chronicling recent news accounts that involve the First Amendment, then describing relevant Supreme Court cases. At the Women’s March of 2017, Madonna stated that she had thought about blowing up the White House. Though she was legally entitled to say so, Rosenberg notes that a century ago, she would have been arrested; Abrams v. United States in 1919 upheld the conviction of Russian Jewish anarchists who had distributed anti-U.S. leaflets. Parkland students were able to organize a nationwide student walkout in part because of Tinker v. Des Moines, which in 1969 recognized high school students’ rights to protest the Vietnam War by wearing black armbands. Tackling everything from former NFL player Colin Kaepernick’s decision to kneel during the national anthem to the Westboro Baptist Church’s picketing of funerals of gay people, the author provides ample historical context.