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It's great to see another major book by professor and two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anthony Lewis (born in 1927), who specializes in telling the history of civil liberties struggles in the United States. Lewis's newest book is Freedom for the Thought That We Hate , subtitled A Biography of the First Amendment (Published January 2008 by Basic Books, Hardcover, 221 pages) The book traces the development the modern idea of freedom of expression. The concept was not always held to mean what we today think it means. In 1791 the following words were added to the Constitution of the United States: "Amendment I. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." But it wasn't until 1919 that the Supreme Court actually began to apply that statement to mean that citizens cannot be sent to prison for criticizing government policy. Until then, the U.S.. had quite a history of political censorship. Most Americans today are surprised when they learn that the Wilson administration sent thousands of people to prison, for terms typically ten to fifteen years in duration, for speaking or writing that they disagreed with U.S. entry into World War I. The author's previous books also remain very important. Over forty years ago Lewis wrote the book Gideon's Trumpet (Paperback, Vintage Books, 228 pages) , which is still in print, with over a million copies sold. It is the complete story of the Supreme Court decision of 1963 that established the right of a defendant to a court-appointed lawyer. The case was based on an appeal by prison inmate Clarence Earl Gideon, who was convicted in Florida of theft without having legal representation. Many readers say that their favorite work by Anthony Lewis is his 1992 Make No Law , subtitled The Sullivan Case and the First Amendment (Paperback, Vintage Books, 368 pages) . In 1960 the New York Times ran an informative and fundraising advertisment that was paid for by a black civil rights organization. The ad criticized southern government officials generally but it didn't name anyone in particular. Montgomery, Alabama police commissioner L. B. Sullivan interpreted the criticism as a reference to himself and he sued the newspaper for libel. An Alabama state court ordered the Times to pay Sullivan $500,000 in damages. In 1964 the Supreme Court of the United States (New York Times Company v. Sullivan) overturned the Alabama court by interpreting the First Amendment to imply that it is not libel to criticize the conduct of government officials. The court also clarified that the federal constitution's First Amendment does restrict state governments. Lewis's newest book, Freedom for the Thought That We Hate , takes as its title a phrase that was used in a dissenting opinion by Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1929. The book is largely about the tension that pulls both ways. Some people get irritated by the fact that other people can get away with saying the most horrible things without bearing any consequences for it, and, at the same time, we know that this is exactly the type of legal system we want to live under. Indicative of the difficulty in discerning where to draw the line, we often find people debating the proper meaning of freedom of expression in the terms: I'm an absolutist; I'm not an absolutist; you're an absolutist; you're not an absolutist. Lewis says it is fortunate that those, in the U.S. at least, who would like to see "hate speech" forbidden by law, have been generally unsuccessful. As a reader of the history, you may ask yourself whether you are an absolutist. What comes into to your mind when you read that, in 1931, the Supreme Court overturned a law that had made it illegal to wave a red flag? Lewis tells the story of a Christian clergyman who, during World War I, under the 1917 Espionage Act, was sentenced to fifteen years in prison for commenting from the pulpit that the Bible requires pacifism. The modern legal meaning of freedom of expression was produced largely by a small number of Supreme Court justices, including Louis Brandeis, who liked to say that sunshine is the best disinfectant. Since it is true in practice that "the Constitution is what the judges say it is" (in the words of a 1907 comment by Charles Evans Hughes, Sr., who was to become a Supreme Court Justice in 1910 and Chief Justice in 1930), a lot has depended on the willingness of a few federal judges to take it upon themselves to overthrow precedent. Some will derisively call it judicial activism; nevertheless, before such activism the people were subjected to such legislation as the Sedition Act of 1798, which provided for the imprisonment of anyone who spoke against a President of the United States.
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