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This book discusses the revolutionary broadening of concepts of freedom of press and freedom of speech in Great Britain and in America in the late eighteenth century, in the period that produced state declarations of rights and then the First Amendment and Fox's Libel Act.
List of contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I The Devising of Narrow Liberties of Press and Speech
- Chapter 1: Blackstone's and Mansfield's Narrow Liberties of Press and Speech, and Broad Crimes of Seditious Libel and Seditious Words: Summaries or Misdescriptions of an Ancient Common Law?
- Chapter 2: The Crimes of Seditious Libel and Seditious Speech: Weapons for Suppressing Dissent in Britain and America?
- Part II The British Broadening of Liberties of Press and Speech
- Chapter 3: The Emerging Broad British View of Freedoms of Press and Speech, Before the Colonial Crisis
- Chapter 4: The Prevailing British View of Freedoms of Press and Speech, in the Decade Before the American Revolution and Declarations of Rights
- Chapter 5: The Dominant British View of Freedoms of Press and Speech, in the Decade Before Fox's Libel Act and America's Bill of Rights
- Part III The American Development of Broad Rights of Press and Speech
- Chapter 6: The Emergence of Expansive American Views of Freedoms of Press and Speech, Before the Colonial Crisis
- Chapter 7: Reasons for the Spread of Broad Views of Liberties of Press and Speech in America, During and After the Colonial Crisis
- Chapter 8: The Prevailing Broad View by the Popular Party of Freedoms of Press and Speech, in the Prerevolutionary Decade Before the American States' Declarations of Rights
- Chapter 9: The Dominant American View of Freedoms of Press and Speech, in the Decade Leading up to Ratification of the Federal Bill of Rights
- Chapter 10: The Constitutional Understanding of Freedoms of Press and Speech, and of Seditious Libel, in Discussions of State and Federal Bills of Rights
- Epilogue
About the author
Wendell Bird is the author of Press and Speech under Assault: The Early Supreme Court Justices, the Sedition Act of 1798, and the Campaign against Dissent (2016); and of Criminal Dissent: Prosecutions under the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 (2020). He earned a D.Phil. degree in legal history from University of Oxford, and a J.D. degree from Yale Law School. He is a Visiting Scholar at Emory University School of Law.
Summary
This book discusses the revolutionary broadening of concepts of freedom of press and freedom of speech in Great Britain and in America in the late eighteenth century, in the period that produced state declarations of rights and then the First Amendment and Fox's Libel Act.
Additional text
Historians have long disagreed about eighteenth-century understandings of freedom of expression. Anyone interested in the formation of the Constitution's press and speech rights should read Wendell Bird's eye-opening work ... Extensive research leads to convincing conclusions about the creation of essential democratic freedoms. Rarely does a book do so much to correct and enhance historical study of a momentous topic.
