The First Amendment, Democracy, and Romance - Hardcover

Shiffrin, Steven H

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 067441862X ISBN 13: 9780674418622

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1990

Synopsis

If an organizing symbol makes sense in First Amendment jurisprudence, it is not the image of a content-neutral government, argues Steven Shiffrin, nor is it a town-hall meeting or even a robust marketplace of ideas. If the First Amendment is to have an organizing symbol, let it be an Emersonian symbol: let it be the image of the dissenter.If an organizing symbol makes sense in First Amendment jurisprudence, it is not the image of a content-neutral government, argues Steven Shiffrin, nor is it a town-hall meeting or even a robust marketplace of ideas. If the First Amendment is to have an organizing symbol, let it be an Emersonian symbol: let it be the image of the dissenter.

About this title

Review

"[Surprises] are in store for readers of [this book]. The biggest one is that [Shiffrin's] First Amendment exemplars aren't such history-making United States Supreme Court justices as Oliver Wendell Holmes and William J. Brennan but Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson."--Herbert Mitgang, The New York Times

"[Shiffrin] masterfully makes the best case for an enduring constitutional and cultural love affair with the First Amendment."--Ronald Collins, ABA Journal

About the Author

Steven H. Shiffrin is the Charles Frank Reavis Sr. Professor of Law at Cornell University. He is the author of "Dissent, Injustice, and the Meanings of America" and "The First Amendment, Democracy, and Romance" (both Princeton).

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 067441862X
• ISBN 13: 9780674418622
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 293