Free speech when constitutionalism was unpopular /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Weinrib, Laura M., author.
Imprint:Chicago, Illinois : Law School, University of Chicago, Nov. 7, 2012.
Description:1 online file (1 audio file) (47 min., 08 sec.) : digital, stereo, MP3.
Language:English
Series:Chicago's best ideas
Chicago's best ideas.
Subject:Freedom of speech -- United States.
Constitutional law -- United States.
Constitutional law.
Freedom of speech.
United States.
Format: E-Resource Spoken word recording Audio Streaming Audio
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/9117053
Hidden Bibliographic Details
Other authors / contributors:University of Chicago. Law School, hosting institution.
Computer file characteristics:MP3.
Sound characteristics:digital stereo
Digital file characteristics:audio file MP3 128Kbps
Notes:Recorded Nov. 7, 2012, posted Jan. 3, 2013.
Summary:"In the mid-1930s, the future of judicial review was uncertain. Politicians, social activists, and even legal academics denounced the federal judiciary's hostility toward New Deal legislation as a threat to democratic progress and economic recovery. In the face of President Roosevelt's "court-packing plan" and competing proposals to curb judicial power, conservative lawyers sought strategies for restoring popular faith in the federal courts. Their solution, Professor Weinrib will argue, was to embrace a cause they had long denounced as a front for radical activity: the judicial protection of free speech. After decades of heated clashes, the American Bar Association joined forces with its long-time adversary, the American Civil Liberties Union, to celebrate the First Amendment. In a self-conscious attempt to improve its public image, it recast the federal judiciary as a defender of personal liberties as well as economic rights. The new civil liberties consensus produced an unprecedented but durable commitment to a constitutional and counter-majoritarian theory of free speech."--Law School faculty podcast webpage.