The Great Dissent: How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His Mind and Changed the History of Free Speech in America
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.13 (754 Votes) |
| Asin | : | B00EP09J9E |
| Format Type | : | |
| Number of Pages | : | 415 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-10-23 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Justice Holmes reconsiders the First Amendment I think this is a valuable book for several reasons. First, I love to read books about Justice Holmes and this is a very good one. While there is nothing startlingly new about OWH here, for the reader less familiar with the Justice, this book is a good introduction--especially since the author relies heavily upon Holmes' publish. C. Henig said History is Not What You Were Taught. For those of us who came of age in the seventies, free speech, especially to protest public policy, is a given. We never learned about the Sedition/Espionage Acts passed during World War One. It comes as a shock to discover that the mildest and most elliptical expression of opposition to that war brought severe punishment. It al. A Change of Head & Heart It was like a religious conversion—a softening of the heart, a profound altering of thought, a rechartering of course. For justice Oliver Wendell Holmes the conversion came late in life, at age 78. We are speaking about “Abrams v. United States” (1919), a Supreme Court decision involving free speech. Holmes&rsq
A lifelong skeptic, he disdained all individual rights, including the right to express one's political views. No right seems more fundamental to American public life than freedom of speech. Yet well into the 20th century, that freedom was still an unfulfilled promise, with Americans regularly imprisoned merely for speaking out against government policies. Now, with the aid of newly discovered letters and confidential memos, law professor Thomas Healy reconstructs in vivid detail Holmes's journey from free-speech opponent to First Amendment hero. But