First Page
199
Abstract
First amendment doctrine is now both broad and complex, and the task of writing about all of it seems at least forbidding and perhaps impossible. Unthwarted by the magnitude of the mission, however, Franklyn Haiman has attempted, in Speech and Law in a Free Society,7 to survey and to integrate almost every area in which the first amendment restricts or should restrict the powers of the states and the federal government. Haiman's book is in some ways reminiscent of Thomas Emer-son's The System of Freedom of Expression." Like Emerson,Haiman devotes only a relatively brief introductory portion of his book to laying the philosophical foundations for a theory of free speech and establishing the doctrinal structure for making first amendment determinations." He then devotes the bulk of the book to demonstrating the results that this approach would yield when applied to the full range of first amendment issues.
Recommended Citation
Frederick Schauer,
Free Speech and the Assumption of Rationality,
36 Vanderbilt Law Review
199
(1983)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/vlr/vol36/iss1/6