ONE (Democracy, Hypocrisy, and the Urgency of the First Amendment)

Can social media, technology, politics, and free speech coexist in a functioning democracy? This question cuts to the core of the First Amendment in the twenty-first century. In this vital book, one of the nation’s top trial lawyers explores the issue from all sides.

Few constitutional issues are more important to the life of our nation—or more divisive—than free speech. Is it protected speech to speak out against the government in a time of war? Can the government ban art or music or books because they are deemed offensive? Can protected hate speech ever cross the line into illegality? Is misinformation protected by the First Amendment? Is technology, including AI, a threat or a promise for speech? The First Amendment also has relevance to our criminal justice system, our college campus culture, even our zoning laws. It will certainly play a factor in the Midterm elections and every election thereafter. And at the center of this most defining issue of our time is attorney Alex Spiro.

Spiro is, at his core, an unwavering believer in free speech. In a personally engaging and forceful way he shares his own initiation into the importance of free speech, with cases from his career—the young rap artists whose words were criminalized, the NBA star who clashed with police, and the infamous “pedo guy” tweet Elon Musk sent about a British caver, among others. Spiro also examines free speech in relation to consequential events such as the January 6, 2021, storming of the US Capitol and campus protests in the wake of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He urges readers to examine their own double standards on the subject and consider its importance apart from political dogmas. And he looks back at the history of the First Amendment, from its drafting in 1789 to the fraught times it has been tested over the last two centuries. Our founders, he writes, chose speech as number one because it is as essential to life as breath itself.