Summary of The Indispensable Right by Jonathan Turley ( Keynote reads )

By Keynote reads

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The Indispensable Right explores the struggle for freedom of speech in the United States, highlighting the historical, legal, and political context of the issue. The First Amendment remains the most significant constitutional commitment to free expression, but the current systemic efforts to control speech, reinforced by public anger, have led to censorship. The Indispensable Right highlights the dangers of the current situation, as academic, media, and corporate interests align with the government's traditional desire to control speech. The book emphasizes the nation's ongoing struggle with the implications of free expression and the limits of tolerance for others' speech.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Keynote reads
• Release date: Jun 21, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227106827

Keynote reads

Biography: Keynote reads is a highly skilled and dedicated book summary writer with over a decade of experience in the field. Keynote reads has a passion for reading and a talent for distilling complex ideas into clear, concise, and engaging summaries. His work spans a wide range of genres, including self-help, business, psychology, and literature. Education: Bachelor of Arts in English Literature - University of Oxford Master of Arts in Communication - Stanford University Professional Experience: Freelance Book Summary Writer (2012 - Present) Collaborated with various authors and publishing houses to create high-quality summaries of their books. Summarized over 300 books, maintaining a consistent style that captures the essence of the original works. Provided summaries for websites, magazines, and educational platforms. Content Editor  Edited and revised summaries submitted by other writers to ensure accuracy and readability. Contributed to the development of the website's style guide for summaries. Skills: Exceptional ability to synthesize information. Strong understanding of various literary and non-fiction genres. Proficient in using digital tools for writing and editing. Excellent written and verbal communication skills. Notable Projects: Developed a series of educational book summaries for an online learning platform, enhancing students' comprehension and retention. Contact Information: Email: [e-mail] LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/keynote-reads

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Introduction

Rage is a pervasive force in society and politics, often found at the extreme of reason. It can be liberating and addictive, allowing us to say and do things we would ordinarily avoid or denounce. However, it can also be dangerous and destabilizing for those who disagree. Rage rhetoric is often seen as low-value speech with high costs for society, and it has often failed to distinguish between rage and rebellion. As political violence increases in the United States, courts and commentators continue to face claims of sedition by the government and new attempts to criminalize speech. Rage rhetoric is the ultimate stress test for a system premised on free speech, but it has often failed due to the rage of dissidents producing rageful responses from the government. The cause of speech suppression lies more deeply in the foundation for free speech in the United States, which has abandoned protections for minority viewpoints due to a lack of a coherent and consistent theory of free speech. As we witness the revival of American sedition, we need to ask why our body politic continues to be a carrier of this virus, which returns with terrible consequences whenever our political temperature rises.

Legal relativism is undermining free speech and many of our underlying institutions, with both the left and right questioning our most cherished rights. The attack on the Capitol in January 2021 was a violent act of people who lost faith in our institutions, while legal academics have called for radical change and portrayed the Constitution as the cause of injustice. Justice Louis Brandeis, a civil libertarian, emphasized the indispensability of free speech to the constitutional system. However, the question of why free speech is indispensable has led to a profound difference in the protection or prosecution of speech. Free speech can be viewed as indispensable to democracy, protected for its ability to foster political positions, or as an essential part of being human, a natural right. Both views treat free speech as an absolute, but the latter allows fewer trade-offs through balancing and harm-based tests. The case of Whitney v. California illustrates the rivaling views of free speech and divergent intellectual strains in American society in the early twentieth century.

Anita Whitney, a bright and intellectually curious child, was sent to Wellesley College in Massachusetts in 1885. The college provided her with a transformative education in political and moral philosophies, as well as a female faculty dominated by social reform advocates. Whitney was shocked by the poverty and inequality faced by the well-off and the vicious cycle of poverty, ignorance, sickness, and vice. After graduating, she became part of a new generation of educated women who matriculated from all-women schools.

Attractive and reserved, Whitney was expected to marry and start a family. Instead, she became disenchanted with settlement work and joined the Socialist Party before World War I. She helped found the Communist Labor Party and was credited with being a major leader in making California the sixth state to give women the vote in 1911.

Whitney was blacklisted by The Woman Patriot editor Margaret C. Robinson and the Massachusetts Public Interests League as a radical. She was a brilliantly unreasonable person, seeing desperate poverty and wanting to end it. Her exposure to the settlements gave her a lifelong purpose and a desire to help change it.

Charlotte Anita Whitney, a woman from a wealthy and established family, was arrested under the criminal syndicalism law in 1919 for speaking on the Negro Problem and denouncing lynching. She was accused of supporting the Communist Labor Party and was charged with violent rhetoric of the Industrial Workers of the World. The trial was a farce, with a reporter falsely claiming a red ag was draped over the American ag on the stage. The trial occurred during the raging influenza epidemic, and Whitney's counsel fell ill with the virus. Despite the disruption, Judge James G. Quinn refused to allow continuances and sent Whitney to prison.

Whitney was allowed to remain free during years of appeal, but her case eventually made it to the Supreme Court but was dismissed due to a technicality. The appeal was re-led and heard by the Court, but was unanimously upheld. The case became famous for its concurrence by Justice Brandeis, who articulated the basis for the clear and present danger standard. The decision included a roaring defense of free speech but still upheld the conviction for a woman engaging in pure political advocacy. This contradiction is often overlooked in recounting the passionate defense of free speech that emerged from the opinion.

Louis Brandeis and Whitney were both activists who saw great injustice in the world and worked to address it. Both were born into Jewish families and attended Harvard Law School, where they wrote a significant law review article titled The Right to Privacy. In 1910, while Whitney became a socialist activist, Brandeis became known as the People's lawyer for his legal crusades, including improving workplace conditions and working hours for women.

When he was nominated by Woodrow Wilson to the Supreme Court, he faced virulent prejudice and sought change in society. Brandeis served with one of the most virulent anti-Semitic judges, Justice James McReynolds, who was described as a continual grouch and sel sh to the last degree. However, Brandeis remained embedded within the system and optimistic that it could achieve social justice.

In 1925, Chief Justice Taft called the case of Whitney v. California before the Court for oral argument, where the radical blacklisted feminist would come before the radical shunned jurist in a battle for the right of free speech in America. The result was historic, as Brandeis saw the opportunity to share his horizonal view of what constitutional law should be in a nation committed to individual rights.

Brandeis states that free speech is both the end and the means, which would seem to mean that free speech itself is the purpose of the Constitution. However, the focus on that democratic function lends itself to balancing tests based on the value of given speech within that functionalist construct. Both Brandeis and Holmes show how even great civil libertarians could accept draconian measures against free speech under this functionalist rationale.

The alternative view of free speech is based on the indispensability of it as a natural right or a right based on individual