Some days it’s hard to slog through what’s happening in the news. Our passion outweighs our reason more often than we’d like to think. As we stand up for what we believe, we’re faced with viewpoints we don’t like. They may be wrong; we may be wrong. I’m not writing this review to take that stand. Instead, I’m touting 23rd Street Books‘ The Free Speech Handbook: A Practical Framework for Understanding Our Free Speech Protections. As a title, it’s a mouthful. But as implied, understanding free speech isn’t simple.
Written by media lawyer Ian Rosenberg and entertainingly cartooned by Mike Cavallaro, The Free Speech Handbook isn’t exactly fun. It might not be a book you tear through in one sitting. You’ll need to stop and digest occasionally. Illustrating ten Supreme Court cases that helped define the First Amendment’s meaning, Rosenberg and Cavallaro tie the past’s understanding to where we are now. (Or almost now, because even though this has been updated, history is happening so fast.) It’s a cliché to say what’s past is prologue, but it’s true.
So you can connect Colin Kaepernick’s taking a knee at the NFL to a 1935 example of two Jehovah’s Witnesses declining to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at school. (This would also be before the words “under God” were added.) A simple act of faith took years to resolve, working its way to the Supreme Court. I have a feeling we’re far from done with this one.
Rosenberg and Cavallaro connect Stormy Daniels to the Pentagon Papers, the Westboro Baptist Church to Charlottesville, and a few more cases that just prove we keep going round and round again. The point is that everybody talks about the importance of free speech. Many want to restrict free speech. But most also don’t really understand the implications of having free speech.
You won’t finish this book and automatically be a legal expert. It’s complex. But you will at least have a better grasp of how complex it actually is. And in a month where you’re seeing people argue about what’s protected, what’s hateful, and what’s important, it would just be good if we could take a moment and be better educated about it.
That’s not to say we’ll all come to some miraculous agreement. But we may have a better chance of making it through. I know what I disagree with, sometimes vehemently. Reading The Free Speech Handbook helped me at least make peace with why speech I disagree with is allowed. And should be.
Granted, that’s not a lot of peace I reached, but it was a step.
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