A Radical History of Free Speech

Freedom of speech has, in recent years, been a rallying cry as much on the right as on the left. Sure, the protection of dissenters, including government whistleblowers, retains its currency among American progressives skeptical of state power. But the Supreme Court ruling in “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010),” which protects the speech rights of corporations, has come to symbolize a rightward tilt in our free speech jurisprudence. Plus, from university campuses to the Black Lives Matter movement, we have all become familiar with the seemingly odd spectacle of the left fighting for increased regulation of speech in the hope of either suppressing the repressive or amplifying the unheard in our cacophonous and wildly unequal era.

Sophia Rosenfeld reviews The Taming of Free Speech: America’s Civil Liberties Compromise by Laura Weinrib.