Customer Reviews

Speech Acts and the First Amendment

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you read the title of this book and think of the on-going academic controversy over whether or not hate speech, pornography, and other controversial communication is covered by 1st Amendment protections, then you should consider this book. Otherwise, Franklyn Haiman's other, more general, works on free speech are probably what you looking for.

This one addresses a very specific topic and does it very well. However, it is is short (barely 100 pages) and postdated (for you debaters looking for evidence). A lot has happened in the "speech acts" debate since 1993 and you just won't find it here. You might find it by Nadine Strossen (her views are closely related to Haiman's but she's written more recently).

This book advances the position that "speech acts" are a bit of intellectual slight-of-hand being used to advance a few (mistaken) scholars' agenda to reduce the power of the 1st Amendment. The chapters are divided so as to take issue with the separate justifications for that agenda one by one. Personally, I think Haiman's logic is outstanding and he's right about every claim he makes. :) Even if you disagree w/ his position, his critiques of relevant scholars (Fish, Lawrence, Matsuda, MacKinnon, and Prosser) makes this book important within the "speech acts" debate. The book is also pretty well documented refferring far more often than MacKinnon ever does to relevant literature and court cases. The index is pretty comprehensive for researchers and the footnotes are solid. I give it a 4 because it is a bit pricey... and is a few years out of date (for example, very little discussion of 14th Amendment issues currently being raised by advocates of reducing the influence of the 1st Amendment).