Customer Reviews

Understanding the First Amendment

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This is an unusually weak installment in the usually helpful "Understanding" law series from LexisNexis. Weaver and Lively have delivered not necessarily an overview of the surprisingly complex realm of the First Amendment, but rather a very quick and sketchy introduction that zooms through myriad sub-topics, with few of them supported by in-depth background that you can really sink your teeth into. A related problem is that complex topics with several layers of legal requirements and standards usually only go about one level deep. For example, the section on defamation draws the difference between private figures and public figures, but neglects to go any deeper into the important (and complicated) sub-level of limited purpose vs. all purpose public figures. The section on telecommunications regulation notes that print, cable, and broadcasting enjoy differing levels of First Amendment protection, but does not explain WHY this is the case, which is important knowledge for students seeking to work in those fields. In fact, WHY anything is a severe deficiency here.

There are much better books that accomplish what this book tries to accomplish but doesn't - in particular I would recommend "First Amendment (Concepts & Insights)" by Daniel A. Farber. As for the Weaver and Lively book, the ordering of topics and the selected illustrative cases seem highly arbitrary, while the cases receive inconsistent coverage that tends to neglect their long-term significance (for example, the historically crucial New York Times v. Sullivan is pretty much mentioned only in passing). The book also suffers from an atrocious index in which basic concepts are awkwardly categorized, with smaller topics then presented under these arbitrary categories - meaning that you would have to know which category a precise topic might fall under in order to find it in the index. The only "understanding" you'll gain from this book is how much you'll need to read other more beneficial overviews of the First Amendment. [~doomsdayer520~]