Review by Choice Review
A work of great insight and careful scholarship that will surely rank among the very best analyses of the Supreme Court's speech and association decisions, and of the First Amendment itself. Kalven (law, Chicago) completed a draft of this work before his death in 1974; his son who prepared the manuscript for publication has taken the title of ``editor.'' Despite this uncertain history, they have produced a work of great power and brilliance. Their dissection of the problems of speech is based on a meticulous analysis of the case law through 1974. No attempt was made to update the analysis through the inclusion of subsequent cases, and none was necessary. This work is complete as it stands and bristles with insight and surprises at every turn. It belongs in every public and academic library. A useful starting point for investigation of the great speech and association problems, it will be useful to mature scholars as well as to general readers.-J.J. Carroll, Southeastern Massachusetts University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Considered in light of the recent Senate hearings on Judge Bork's fitness for the Supreme Court, this exhaustive historical examination of the First Amendment to the Constitution by legal expert Kalven also the author of The Negro & The First Amendment (Univ. of Chicago, 1965) pursues an exceptionally timely and thought-provoking agenda. Unfinished at Kalven's death in 1974, the book has been completed by his son, Jamie, whose afterword outlines his father's research and writing style and the editorial choices he faced in finishing his father's magnum opus. Kalven's approach is to trace what he terms a Socratic dialogue between the Supreme Court and American society as the questions and limits of freedom of speech have been legislated, debated, and defined throughout the country's history. Documenting this ongoing process through analysis of the major cases involving First Amendment rights, Kalven considers the constitutional experience in action as it has determined such momentous topics as obscenity, civil rights, and political sanctions. Notes; to be indexed. JB. 342.73'0853 Freedom of speech U.S. [OCLC] 87-45059
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This juggernaut of a book is introduced movingly by its editor as the product of 12 years' work, after his father's death in 1974 while working on this study. Completed by the son, it is a nonpareil examination of the ``American constitutional experience under the First Amendment''an assessment of the ways in which the American tradition of free speech has been defined, refined and elucidated by the Supreme Court through our history. Explored in case-by-case detail are the Court's decisions on censorship and Civil Rights cases; the 1952 Dennis v. United States ``great confrontation'' on the issue of the right to advocate the violent overthrow of the Government; on sanctions against groups, chiefly the U.S. Communist Party and its individual members, which brought on the heyday of the House Un-American Activities Committee that, in effect, according to the book, made a de facto attempt to outlaw the Party. The sophistication, subtlety and depth of the discussion of this era of the loyalty oath and McCarthyism, as Justices Frankfurter, Douglas, Black, Harlan et al weighed First Amendment issues, is impressive scholarship that makes the reader keenly aware of how imperiled free speech in America is at all times. (January) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
University of Chicago law professor Kalven was at work on this massive study of free expression under the Constitution when he died in 1974. Kalven's son, Jamie, a free-lance writer, edited the manuscript, collaborating with Owen Fiss of Yale Law School. The work analyzes Supreme Court decisions affecting First Amendment rights between World War I and the early 1970s, particularly in the areas of political speech and association. Kalven covered every landmark case (obscenity, libel, sedition) and added his own commentary. For serious students of constitutional law. Kenneth F. Kister, Pinellas Park P.L., Fla. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A posthumous study, edited by Kalven's son, of 20th-century First Amendment cases; from the author (12 years deceased) of The Negro and the First Amendment and Delay in Court (with Hans Zeisel). Over some 40 chapters, Kalven practically readjudicates most of the great freedom of speech cases since the 1920's, arguing a central principle: that criticism of government and government officials should never be a crime. ""Political freedom ends when government can use its powers and its courts to silence its critics,"" he writes. Kalven's task is Herculean. To compare: when Chafee wrote his famous Free Speech in the United States in 1920, there were some 20 First Amendment cases ruled on by the Supreme Court; when Meiklejohn wrote his seminal Free Speech and its Relation to Self-Government in 1949, there were about 100. After the revolutionary Warren Court, though, Kalven has over 400 to consider. But he sees this as a good sign, evidence of the vitality of the tradition. Kalven is not an absolutist; he feels that ""speech is 'almost an absolute'. . .a result to be won by sweat in the individual case, time after time."" Kalven's book is divided into two large sections--the first dealing with the content of speech, the second with freedom of association. Despite its dealing with decades-old cases, the work has a futuristic sense to it--the promise of the future resonating from the voices of the past whose struggles Kalven studies. Legal scholarship on a grand scale--and particularly timely given the recent Bork/Supreme Court debates. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
