What's Wrong with the First Amendment

by Steven H. Shiffrin

What is Wrong with the First Amendment? argues that the US love affair with the First Amendment has mutated into free speech idolatry. Free speech has been placed on so high a pedestal that it is almost automatically privileged over privacy, fair trials, equality and public health, even protecting depictions of animal cruelty and violent video games sold to children. At the same time, dissent is unduly stifled and religious minorities are burdened. The First Amendment benefits the powerful at the expense of the vulnerable. By contrast, other Western democracies provide more reasonable accommodations between free speech and other values though their protections of dissent, and religious minorities are also inadequate. Professor Steven H. Shiffrin argues that US free speech extremism is not the product of broad cultural factors, but rather political ideologies developed after the 1950s. He shows that conservatives and liberals have arrived at similar conclusions for different political reasons.

225 pages, Hardcover

Published October 6, 2016

Reviews

[Harisankar]

An interesting book tracing the different cases on Free Speech in the US. At places it also draws analogies on different issues (like privacy,religion,violence, etc.) vis-à-vis European jurisdictions. It mostly is a critique of how free speech in the US has been privileged and protected above other competing social values.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

Apparently, what's wrong is that it includes the people Shiffrin does not approve of, and, after all, what ”decent” person would want to hear those people speak?