REFLECTIONS ON FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND THE FIRST AMENDMENT

by George Anastaplo. Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 2007. 336pp. Paper. $26.95. ISBN: 9780813191744. Cloth. $70.00. ISBN: 9780813124247.

Reviewed by Ira L. Strauber, Department of Political Science, Grinnell College. Strauber [at] Grinnell.edu.

pp.591-601

For thirty some odd years, George Anastaplo has been an inimitable advocate of his philosophical approach to First Amendment jurisprudence and reading the Constitution. It would be justifiable to locate and read his oeuvre within the intellectual circles of Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, and the present work echoes many well-rehearsed Straussian themes originally presented in THE CONSTITUTIONALIST: NOTES ON THE FIRST AMENDMENT (1971, 2005) that is cited as the foundation work for REFLECTIONS. These themes include, but are not exhausted by, interpreting the ills of the present via canonical texts of Western civilization; an emphasis on citizenship and civility; the close association between political and religious freedom; the primacy of judgment and the precise use of language versus uncritical thinking and unbridled passions; and law as the embodiment of reason, judgment, and precise language.

But there is more to REFLECTIONS than solely those themes. First, REFLECTIONS is dedicated to Alexander Meiklejohn and Harry Kalven Jr. Readers attentive to their or Anastaplo’s work will profitably associate REFLECTIONS with critical readings of Meiklejohn’s and Kalven’s jurisprudence. For example, there are suggestions of engaging Meiklejohn in REFLECTIONS’ approach to jurisprudence via: a conception of human nature; a focus on freedom, self-government, and the common good as dependent on civic education and a vigorous public exchange of ideas; the premise that neither freedom nor political truth is assured; the premise that a conception of freedom appropriate for one polity might not be appropriate for another; a wariness about the impact of private enterprise on political liberty; and the role of jurisprude as teacher. And there are suggestions of engaging Kalven in the book’s discussion of Justice Black, the speech/action distinction, seditious libel, obscenity, the risks of freedom of speech, and First Amendment versus Due Process clause interpretations of case law.

Secondly, REFLECTIONS continues to address Anastaplo’s long-running dispute with his critics over the extent to which the roots of freedom of speech are to be found in common law or, as the author would have it, a more radical natural genesis in the revolutionary principles of the Declaration of Independence. Thirdly, the personal has been the political for Anastaplo: his jurisprudence explicitly and tacitly reflects his losing 1950 battle with the Illinois bar (he refused to answer questions about his political affiliations) and expulsions from both Russia and Greece (CONSTITUTIONALIST, pp.xi-xiii). [*592]

The meld of these personal experiences and eclectic intellectual influences contributes to a voice that is more often than not distinctive, self-assured, audaciously unconventional, and challenging. A salient example of all of this is Anastaplo’s reference to his considerations as “sonnets” (p.xi). Parts One and Two each have thirteen chapters; each chapter has thirteen sections; and each section has three paragraphs. Philip A. Dynia’s LPBR review (2007) of Anastaplo’s most recent REFLECTIONS ON CONSTITUTIONAL LAW (2006), noted the sonnet form at work there, each Part with nine chapters and sections, each section, three paragraphs. Dynia, a self-proclaimed non-Straussian, prudently refused to say anything more about the “sonnet” form, other than to suggest that perhaps it was related to some Straussian secret.

I too am no Straussian, but I am less cautious and sensible than Dynia. I venture to suggest that the “sonnet” form is related to Anastaplo’s stated goal that “constitutionalism” (p.xiii) calls for, requires, and deserves reading “with . . . seriousness and . . . care” (p.xii). Very generally conceived, reading a sonnet requires attentiveness to a text that has been divided into “syllogistic” parts, with its parts containing material that compare and contrast ideas, often shifting from the general and specific, all toward the end of developing and qualifying the character and consequences of ideas for the sake of illustrating a major premise or point of view (Finch and Varnes 2002, pp.298-299; Hunter 1999, p.258; Dubrow 1981, p.66; Rivers 1958, p.51).

Readers of REFLECTIONS will find that they are reading a text that requires attentiveness to this kind of writing. Coincidentally or not, readers of REFLECTIONS will find that jurisprudence-cum-sonnet implicates them in webs of continuities and discontinuities among ancient and modern texts, historical references, and political opinions that coalesce into the author’s views about the past, present, and future of constitutionalism, the common goods of a law-governed polity, and First Amendment adjudication.

As a self-styled New Institutionalist, and therefore outside the author’s intellectual circles, I admit to the guilty pleasure of being intellectually captivated and engaged by working through these “sonnets,” and of trying to get within them to write a prose review which does them justice. I want to add that I am not a close enough reader of Anastaplo’s oeuvre to say how much here is actually old wine in new bottles. But even to the extent that might be so, those within Anastaplo’s circles will want to look at this book for its skilled and precise rendition of established fare. And those outside those circles, who are less familiar with Anastaplo’s concerns, or even those ill-disposed toward those circles, should yet find the book worth careful reading and deliberation.

Part One provides the materials for an education in constitutionalism, liberty of speech and press, and the common goods of a republican polity. (There are appendices of original materials for Part [*593] One and Two.) Chapter One situates Plato’s APOLOGY as one of those “sacred texts upon which Western Civilization rests” (p.3). To step aside from a chapter-to-chapter review for a moment, REFLECTIONS, in its entirety, depends upon Anastaplo’s appreciation of Socratic commitments to reason, principle-based action, civic responsibility, and the “folly of suppressing conscientious men and women of talent” (p.4). REFLECTIONS also depends upon a Socratic-like condemnation of (today’s) “rampant individualism” (p.184), self-regarding actions based on the passions and mere preferences of persons, and “the tyranny of an undisciplined imagination” (p.185). At bottom, tensions between Socratic commitments and today’s values lead to “the heart of the problem . . . , [which] is the question of whether the community should be able to shape the character of its members” (p.184, italics omitted).

Back to Chapter One, one of its main functions is to situate Anastaplo’s positive answer to this question in the Socratic tradition that requires civic education to develop the character of a people and good citizenship. As a fundamental principle of constitutionalism (p.8), opinion leaders are responsible for this instruction, which must take place in both the public and private sector. Readers will be taught that, absent this civic education, the First Amendment becomes part of the problem as it becomes over-extended as a shibboleth encouraging “freedom of expression” and the promotion of those self-regarding actions based on the passions and mere preferences of persons. Anastaplo consistently contrasts this selfishness with an authentic understanding of the First Amendment which encourages public-spirited citizens to be engaged in the reason-giving activities associated with a republican form of government (p.187), and willing like Socrates, to “to speak out about the issue of concern to the community” (p.8).

The cultural forces that threaten an authentic First Amendment polity and encourage a political culture of selfishness are perhaps a central reason why Anastaplo is concerned about whether our founding constitutional beliefs “can continue to shape and guide a Country that is now almost a third of a billion” (p.187). Chapter Two presents St. Paul as a paradigm for a spiritual and philosophical conception of the meaning of a people, and for continuities and discontinuities among Greek, Judaic, and Reformation conceptions of a people, to characterize elements of the authentic roots of freedom of speech. Authentic roots, if nourished, contribute to cultural values associated with attentiveness to the significance of precise language, personal choice, transcendent principles, conscience, and commitment.

Chapter Three presents Thomas More’s career as, in effect, an embodiment of these values and commitments. Co-related, it presents the experience and tradition of Parliamentary freedom of speech as precursors for freedom of speech in Congress and then among the American people. It also reflects on More’s career (attacking heretics) and post-1215 repudiations of the Magna Carta as object lessons about how [*594] otherwise sound values and commitments can be turned to inappropriate uses. These lessons are meant to teach that advocates of free speech values in a republican regime must be vigilant in defending their proper use, and that use includes a Socratic-like attentiveness to differences between appearance and reality and the need to challenge deceptive ideas and a false sense of complacency in the rightness of things (p.19).

John Milton, the focal point of Chapter Four, is championed for his rejection of the law of prior restraint of the press, for his appreciation of the proper role of government in publishing offensive materials, and for the efficaciousness of his rhetoric. However, Anastaplo raises questions about Milton’s “rapturous accounts of the power of truth” (p.23), granted the extent to which a population might not be well-informed and “even more important . . . the caliber of the people” (p.23). Milton’s willingness to recognize distinctions among citizens resonates with Socratic-inspired observations that “it may be . . . that the deepest truths are reliably accessible to only a few” (p.24), and that “a decent community . . . recognizes that its most talented members should be treasured” (p.25). In this, looking both to the past (Greece) and the present (our polity), Anastaplo warns about misuses of free speech values and offers the caveat that “some communities are better equipped than others for the robust debate that Milton considers useful” (p.24). (This argument foreshadows his later praise of English political cultural sensibilities, and, in Part Two, ensuing doubts about the utility of Declaration of Human Rights).

Chapter Five’s discussion of William Blackstone’s chronicle of “the development in Great Britain of an effective recognition of liberty under law” (p.27) is the exemplar for Anastaplo’s emphasis on the role of lawyers as trustees for constitutionalism in a rule governed polity. The primary focus is on Blackstones’ defense of law, the necessity of limited power and the gracious behavior of rulers, the principle of habeas corpus, and respect for tradition (also associated with Edmund Burke) as backbones for the preservation of liberty. This chapter also discusses Patrick Henry as both an American heir of Blackstone and a precursor to Lincoln’s trusteeship for “rational liberty” (p.35) and free speech.

Chapter Six provides a defense of the Declaration of Independence and the Northwest Ordinance for an originalist (my word) interpretation of the fundamental principles of the Constitution in general, and, specifically, the right of and duty to engage in full and frank discussion of government (p.37). Perhaps the discussion of the Declaration is a more or less familiar, albeit controversial, one in defense of its implications for republican values entrenched in the Constitution. Perhaps the more engaging discussion concerns Section 14 of the Northwest Ordinance and its extension of the fundamental principles of civil and religious liberty to the government of territories (p.38) purportedly foreshadowing, and implicitly justifying the Fourteenth Amendment’s extension of those principles to State government. This [*595] chapter also includes a few words of long-standing concerns with the Ordinance and slavery as foreshadowing the appropriateness of a sustained debate over its constitutional status as conditional.

Chapter Seven characterizes the text of the Constitution as a product and expression of popular power and of free, honest, and well-considered political discussion. To that end, the chapter addresses free speech and legislative immunity, the Preamble, Article IV, a republican form of government, and evidence for reading the Constitution as requiring and justifying the duty and rights of citizens to exert their influence on one another and their governments.

Chapter Eight represents the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom as the pre-eminent State document bespeaking fundamental principles of a free people, freedom of the press, and the free exercise of religion. Its apparent crucial contribution is its rhetoric, for a people of reason and conviction, which is contrasted favorably to the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights and its rhetoric of piety. This chapter thus raises interesting tensions between spirituality and political freedom. The Statute is also significant for its forward-looking rejection of state establishment of religion (in line with the Declaration and laws of nature) and for its Preamble, which is underscored as a source for an emphasis on the due process of law, a Milton-like defense of a free press, and as expression of confidence in political conflict and free speech as the means of constituting shared political truths.

The Statute’s Preamble is also highlighted for its appreciation of the circumstances of politics, particularly the extent to which there must be limits on political power because of its potential to either corrupt religion and/or limit religious liberty. The circumstances of politics also leads Anastaplo to suggest that the Statute serve as a reminder that freedom, making the right choices, and appropriate political action are not the same things, and that for liberty to achieve its ends it must be accompanied by self-discipline (p.54).

Chapter Nine is Anastaplo’s version of the evolution of a Bill of Rights for the Constitution, with particular attention to the incorporation process in the House and Senate. This version puts great weight on seeing the Constitution as a statute and its foremost concern as Congressional power to address the applicability of the Bill of Rights to States. (This discussion reverts back to the previous chapter’s consideration of the role of chance in politics and its impact on law.) The chapter concludes with a discussion of the unenumerated rights of the Ninth Amendment to represent the existence of rights antecedent to the Constitution, and thereby to makes those antecedent rights available for interpreting the values and principles upon which the Constitution rests. All of this leads to the more abstract claim that, for written law to be efficacious, it must be rooted in the traditions, political practices, and understandings of a people.

Chapter Ten addresses the organization of the First Amendment. The specific [*596] concern is why religion is addressed prior to speech and press. The chapter indicates that the organization of the Amendment reflects commitments to freedom of religion as the antecedent liberty, making religious and political liberties simultaneously inter-related and distinct (thereby returning to the issue of relationships between spiritual concerns and political ones). For example, the relationship between the two is the bridge to a number of considerations: a comparison between First Amendment restrictions freedom of religion and political speech and press within the context of considerations of due process of law; distinctions between political and non-political speech; what is and is not protected by the First Amendment; and “the development and protection of the moral standards upon which effective republican government depends” (p.67).

Another example comes with a comparison between concerns about the consequences of not adhering to fundamental distinctions between what is and is not protected by the First Amendment or to concerns about effective republican government. This comparison relates to concerns about the present (the extent to which it appears that there are “no effective limits placed either upon what can be said or upon how and where it may be said”) (p.68) and observations about the past (the prosecutions legitimized in the 1919 decisions of SCHENCK v. UNITED STATES and DEBS v. UNITED STATES, and the 1951 decision of DENNIS v. UNITED STATES). This comparison is constructed to have readers think about the “deprecation both of citizenship and of those community measures that contribute to the proper shaping of the moral character of citizens” (p.69), and to challenge readers to think historically and philosophically about “what we consider proper for the community to do, acting through its governments, to shape the moral character of citizens” (p.69).

History and philosophy are also in play in Chapter Eleven, comparing and contrasting the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 with the Jeffersonian Revolution of 1800 and the Virginia and Kentucky legislative resolutions of 1798-1799. At one level, in this readers will find themselves thinking the extent to which “the integrity of a constitutional process depends upon the morale and wisdom of the people” (p.76). At another level, they are invited to draw an analogy between the politics surrounding the PATRIOT ACT of 2001 and the political history of the Alien and Sedition Acts. For example, for all its faults, the earlier statute did provide for its own expiration, trial by jury, and truth as a defense against its charges. Also, rather than depending on courts to challenge the constitutionality of legislation, the Sedition Acts were vigorously challenged in the political realm (e.g., the Jeffersonian Revolution). The tacit point is to remind readers that the present does not necessarily provide greater protections of freedom than the past did, and that the defense of freedom depends primarily on political participation and processes.

Chapter Twelve situates John Stuart Mill’s ON LIBERTY as a canonical text for understanding challenges to restrictions on speech. ON LIBERTY is [*597] an opportunity to revisit Socrates and Jesus, and to see ways in which Mill actually improved upon these precursors. For example, Mill is praised for the extent to which he was more tolerant of freedom of thought and discussion yet had well-considered doubts about (especially Milton’s) faith that truth will necessarily prevail. Mill also draws Anastaplo into a discussion of the fact that the elite (i.e., Socrates and Jesus) are sometimes subject to oppression; and More, Milton, and Mill draw him into a discussion of the extent to which liberty depends upon the character of a people, and the character of the people can be improved if we only had the political education and sensibilities to take full advantage of them (p.84).

Chapter Thirteen is especially difficult to characterize briefly because it amalgamates, explicitly and implicitly, many of the continuities and discontinuities of Part One’s themes and claims. Suffice it to say then that the chapter’s architectonics are the rhetoric of John C. Calhoun, his defense of the South and slavery, and his being at liberty to express himself accordingly in the midst of the “clear and present danger” (p.92) of the onset of the Civil War. The two systemic implications of this architectonics are: (1) “Freedom,” says Anastaplo, “is like medicine that is hardly likely to do one much good if it is not capable, in some circumstances, of doing one harm” (p.88, italics omitted), and (2) The slavery debate exemplifies a polity and people with a mature enough sense of liberty and constitutionalism to address, without governmental interference, its seriously inflammatory issues. Readers are, of course, left to make their own inferences about today.

Part Two addresses a range of First Amendment cases and issues within the context of the tensions among Part One’s materials and themes. Granted space constraints, what follows are but shafts of light on each chapter aimed to reflect on respective elements of Part One of the review. Chapter One commends and defends Justice Hugo Black’s jurisprudence for its First Amendment, Commerce Clause, and Fourteenth Amendment “originalism” of principle and constitutionalism. Black’s originalism of principle is offered up as the jurisprudential superior to “realism” that makes more of forces than it does of ideas, and more of precedent than constitutional principles, for constructing “the human soul and of human communities” (p.99).

In Chapter Two, the ESPIONAGE ACT (1917) convictions in SCHENCK v. UNITED STATES AND ABRAMS v. UNITED STATES, and the realistic jurisprudence of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, are the focal points for how things go wrong when realism, passions of the moment, and excessive concerns over dangerous speech triumph over true First Amendment principles. Nonetheless, the chapter finds yesterday’s reaction to volatile speech “healthier” than today’s tolerance for virtually anything and everything said. (In this regard, Anastaplo finds the Internet especially disturbing.)

Chapter Three compares the words and deeds of (labor organizer and Socialist) Eugene V. Debs in opposition to the draft in World War I, and the Court’s [*598] upholding his conviction under the ESPIONAGE ACT in DEBS v. UNITED STATES (1917), with the words and deeds of President Wilson in his pursuit his passion for a world to be made safe for democracy, and the prosecutors in the case. The point of the comparison is to suggest the extent to which the words and deeds of the latter two ought to be seen as more “dreadfully mischievous” (p.112) as threats to liberty than those of Debs.

Also GITLOW v. NEW YORK (1925), upholding Benjamin Gitlow’s conviction for publishing THE LEFT WING MANIFESTO as a violation of the New York State criminal anarchy statue, but also stipulating the First Amendment’s protection of speech as incorporated into the Fourteenth Amendment restrictions on States, is highlighted as an example of the role that chance plays in constitutional adjudication, as well as an example of the legal and political problems that arise when the stable meaning of original principles falls prey to realism.

Chapter Four explores (mainly) the relative strengths of the words and deeds of Winston Churchill, from 1940 through to his “Iron Curtain” speech of 1946, in defense of freedom as a spokesperson for freedom who had the courage, as a leader, to convey to the public messages that sustained the spirit of liberty. In contrast, Chapter Five is the author’s take on the Smith Act convictions sustained in DENNIS v. UNITED STATES (1951), and prosecution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, to characterize a tendency for the legal community, from bottom to the top, to follow political passions in times of perceived crisis that discourages both elites and citizens to sustain the spirit of liberty, freedom of speech, and association. These two chapters together constitute Anastaplo’s warning that the only alternative to principles of liberty abandoned to realism and the passions of the moment are for spokespersons for free speech to engage the public in sustained criticisms of goals and methods of those who would limit speech. (Specific mention is made to our HOMELAND SECURITY program.)

Of course, we know from Part One how and why Anastaplo believes that freedom of speech is not absolute. Chapter Six is primarily about COHEN v. CALIFORNIA (1971), and overturning Cohen’s disturbing the peace conviction for wearing a jacket displaying the slogan, “Fuck the Draft,” (Anastaplo would prefer I did not write that) in a courthouse. The case provides Anastaplo the opportunity to give vent to his despair over individualism, uncontrolled passions, an ethos of freedom of expression, and his remorse over fundamental principles connecting spiritualism, politics, and the common good left unattended.

Chapter Seven’s discussion of the Pentagon Papers controversy, interwoven with discussions of the publication of instructions about how to make a hydrogen bomb and overturning of a libel verdict in NEW YORK TIMES v. SULLIVAN (1964), is presented as a case-study of what it means to hold dear principles of freedom of the press, the dictum of no prior constraint, and the [*599] necessity to show harm to the community to limit freedom. Although the Court is commended for refusing, in both the Papers contoversy and the TIMES case, to back efforts to enforce military security practices, Anastaplo points out that it is really the “patriotism” (p.146) of those struggling with whether to publish sensitive materials that is the ultimate resource for drawing lines about what should be published.

Chapter Eight addresses primarily obscenity and the law, and secondarily cell phones, to address relationships and tensions between non-political speech, its cousin freedom of expression, and property rights (i.e., conceived as what rightfully belongs to persons as persons, rather than as citizens). All of this is encompassed by what the author finds is a culture with tendencies toward excessive individualism, “spiritual waste,” “lascivious tastes,” and the higher passions becoming boorish (p.153). Anastaplo’s primary concern in all this appears to be not so much to recommend legal solutions to line-drawing about what is protected and what is not (here he sees predicaments best resolved by due process considerations) but rather to warn that a society overly concerned with privacy and property rights as related to obscenity might not be one that is situated to respond to Churchill-like calls for the sacrifices of citizenship.

Issues of property rights, this time conceived in economic terms, and public freedom are the controlling theme of Chapter Nine. The focal point is the writings of Milton Friedman, who is characterized as having his heart in the right place (p.159) when it comes to justifying market-freedom. But Friedman is criticized for an over-emphasis on material freedom that the author identifies with excessive individualism and a conception of the good defined relative to supply and demand. In this, the author contrasts material and spiritual freedom and the extent to which the former can be at odds with a “public character upon which an enduring freedom depends” and an authentic concern for “the common Good” (p.160). At a more abstract level, property rights becomes a means to raise the question about “who is truly free” (p.158) and how a “genuine freedom is . . . a reliable grasp of excellence” (p.159).

BUCKLEY v. VALEO (1976), the constitutionality of campaign finance regulations, money as property, political freedom, and the common good occupy Anastaplo’s attention in Chapter Ten. Here again, Anastaplo raises the question whether the Court ought to intervene rather than leave it to Congress to sort out campaign finance regulations issues. For Anastaplo, the constitutionality of campaign finance regulations comes down to much ado about nothing. He sees finance regulations as having an insignificant positive impact on an electoral process undermined by the undue influence of wealth. And he doubts whether regulations have a significant negative impact on freedom of speech. Hence, such regulations per se are not likely to make much of a difference, save unless they help to create public confidence in public institutions, and thereby teach the [*600] public what should be important about elections (p.169).

The impact of the market on public character and of the over-extension of freedom of speech is revisited in Chapter Eleven’s discussion of the protection of commercial speech, particularly in relation to permitting lawyers to advertise. The crucial issue here is “what it should mean for one to be a member of a profession” (p. 173, italics omitted), and the extent to which advertising tends to undermine and displace the role of the lawyer as a trustee for the community and the law with the role of lawyer as that of the money-maker.

The penultimate chapter picks up on the roots of liberty in English political cultural sensibilities and the political circumstances of a people and its politics to consider the extent to which the post- World War II UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS (1948) represents “the highest aspirations of the common people or rather the highest aspirations for the common people” (p.178). The point here is to have readers question the appropriateness and efficaciousness of a universal declaration of rights, albeit high aspirations and prescriptions for liberty. The potential inappropriateness of the DECLARATION is traced to its being “more the work of intellectuals than the results of political processes” (p.181), and its uncertain efficaciousness is traced to its distant connections to the traditions, privileges, and obligations of respective citizens with which the DECLARATION is supposed to concern itself. In its stead, Anastaplo promotes “international law developed and applied across centuries” (p.182) and its putative greater sensitivity to respective political regimes and citizens, rather than abstract rights, as the preferable path for aspirations to improve political life.

The book concludes with provocations about the cultural insidiousness of television and the Internet as forces which could undermine a “sense of community and the character of a people” necessary to sustain constitutionalism and free speech. Again readers are prompted to consider the impact of cultural forces, like “rampant individualism” (p.184) and the “tyranny of undisciplined imagination” (p.185), which threaten liberty and the civic competence of citizens. In turn, readers are asked to think seriously about the necessity of legislation that seeks to shape the public morality of citizens (p.186), ostensibly without which the First Amendment could become nothing more than a declaration in defense of the freedom of expression of a people who have given themselves over to the proclivities and infatuations of self-centeredness and private satisfactions.

REFRENCES:
Anastaplo, George. 1971. THE CONSTITUTIONALIST: NOTES ON THE FIRST AMENDMENT. Dallas, Texas: Southern Methodist University Press.

Anastaplo, George. 2006. REFLECTIONS ON CONSTITUTIONAL LAW. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. [*601]

Blackstone, William. 1979. COMMENTARIES ON THE LAWS OF ENGLAND. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Dubrow, Heather. 1981. “Shakespeare’s Undramatic Monologues: Toward a Reading of the Sonnets. 32 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY 55-68.

Dynia, Philip A. 2007. Review of REFLECTIONS ON CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, by George Anastaplo. LAW AND POLITICS BOOK REVIEW, 17:4, pp.286-289.

Finch, Annie and Kathrine Varnes. 2002. AN ECHALTATION OF FORMS, CONTEMPORARY POETS CELEBRATE THE DIVERSITY OF THEIR ART. Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press.

Hunter, J. Paul. 1999. THE NORTON INTRODUCTION TO POETRY (7th ed). New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company.

Mill, J.S. ON LIBERTY.

Plato. DIALOGUES.

Rivers, Elias L. 1958. “Certain Formal Characteristics of the Primitive Love Sonnet.” 33 SPECULUM 42-55.

CASE REFERENCES:
ABRAMS v. UNITED STATES, 250 U.S. 616 (1919).

BUCKLEY v. VALEO, 424 U.S. 1 (1976).

COHEN v. CALIFORNIA, 403 U.S. 15 (1971).

DEBS v. UNITED STATES, 249 U.S. 211 (1919).

DENNIS v. UNITED STATES, 341 U.S. 494 (1951).

NEW YORK TIMES v. SULLIVAN, 376 U.S. 254 (1964).

SCHENCK v. UNITED STATES, 249 U.S. 47 (1919).


© Copyright 2007 by the author, Ira L. Strauber.