Book description
The guarantee of free speech enshrined in the U. S. Bill of Rights
draws upon two millennia of Western thought about the value and
necessity of free inquiry. Acclaimed legal scholar George Anastaplo
traces the philosophical development of the idea of free inquiry from
Plato's Apology to Socrates to John Milton's Areopagitica. He
describes how these seminal texts and others by such diverse thinkers
as St. Paul, Thomas More, and John Stuart Mill influenced the
formation and the earliest applications of the First Amendment.
Anastaplo also focuses on the critical free speech implications of a
dozen Supreme Court cases and shows how First Amendment
interpretations have evolved in response to modern events. Reflections
on Freedom of Speech and the First Amendment grounds its vision of
America's most basic freedoms in the intellectual traditions of
Western political philosophy, providing crucial insight into the legal
challenges of the future through the lens of the past.
""Anastaplo's understanding of the importance of
thoughtful speech for good government allows him to offer chapters on
individuals and books or documents that standard treatments of the
first amendment do not cover."" -- Murray Dry, author of
Civil Peace and the Quest for Truth: The First Amendment
George Anastaplo, professor of law at Loyola University in Chicago
and lecturer in the liberal arts at the University of Chicago, is the
author of numerous books, including Reflections on Constitutional Law
and The Constitutionalist.
