Law Commons^™

Book Review: The Free Press Crisis Of 1800: Thomas Cooper's Trial For Seditious Libel, Eric Easton

All Faculty Scholarship

This article was an invited book review of a book of the same title by Peter Charles Hoffer. Hoffer, Distinguished Research Professor of History at the University of Georgia, has published this accessible case history as part of the University Press of Kansas’s Landmark Law Cases & American Society series, which he co-edits.

The book discusses one of the cases arising as a result of the Alien & Sedition Act under the presidency of John Adams, mostly targeting Republicans who editorialized against the Adams administration.

Racial Defamation As Free Speech: Abusing The First Amendment, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

The traditional view of the first amendment's free speech guarantee as absolute, allowing few and narrow exceptions, reflects the Constitution's dedication to an open and unfettered exchange of ideas. Those thoughts that are abhorrent to a free society, the argument goes, will wither when aired but fester if suppressed. Moreover, who is to decide which ideas are offensive? The interests of the state may well be inferior to those of the people, the wisdom of public servants often suspect in quality and motivation. But freedom of speech is so precious and delicate a liberty it must be preserved at great …