The First Amendment: Freedom of Speech

The First Amendment: Freedom of Speech is the latest volume in the Thomson Reuters Law for the Layperson Legal Almanac Series. This work provides both nonattorneys (law students, clients, academics) and attorneys with a focused and coherent review of the evolution of free speech rights in the United States.

Professor David L. Hudson Jr. makes common First Amendment principles – such as prior restraint, overbreadth, vagueness, fighting words, public forum, and more – easy to understand through plain-English explanations of the concepts and fact-specific descriptions of the Supreme Court rulings establishing them.

In addition to a review of free speech protections, The First Amendment: Freedom of Speech contains chapters on the various categories of unprotected speech, the special rules related to commercial speech, pornographic speech, public employee speech, and student speech, as well as a chapter on how the First Amendment impacts tort law in the United States.

This publication was recently cited in Judge Clay's majority opinion in Bible Believers v. Wayne Cnty., Mich., No. 13-1635, 2015 WL 6500505, at *15, n. 12 (6th Cir. Oct. 28, 2015), as well as by Judge Prado of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in his dissenting opinion in Bell v. Itawamba Cnty. Sch. Bd., No. 12-60264, 2015 WL 4979135, at *46 (5th Cir. Aug. 20, 2015), and by the majority of the Tennessee Supreme Court in State v. Clark, 452 S.W.3d 268, 289 n.10 (Tenn. 2014).