MW, 1:00 PM-2:15 PM, C2 203

Fulfills College A&H Requirement

Instructor: Brian Amsden
E-Mail: bamsden@indiana.edu
Office: C2 273
Phone: 855-5562

No American today would care to stand against “freedom of speech.”
As an ideological slogan, it carries as much weight as any other of
those inalienable rights that define the great American experiment.
What is often lost among reflections of our exceptionalism, however,
is an appreciation of the complexity, richness, and contentiousness
of this right. Freedom of speech is a relatively recent idea in
western history, and it has taken on a great variety of meanings in
that time. Today the meaning, scope, and priority of free speech
remains hotly contested in the law courts and public generally. We
question the value of angry and occasionally violent protests over
health reform at town hall meetings. We disagree over the extent to
which military and intelligence reports concerning torture should be
made available to the public. We debate the value of campus speech
codes that restrict the use of racist, sexist, and homophobic
language. Always we hail “freedom of speech”; rarely do we agree as
to what “freedom of speech” means.

This course aims to engage freedom of speech as a historical,
philosophical, legal, and rhetorical concept. The first part of the
course will examine the historical development of freedom of speech
as well as the philosophical justifications for it. Contemporary
disputes over free speech are influenced greatly by these
justifications. A debate will turn out very differently depending on
whether we value freedom of speech as a means to truth, as a method
of individual self expression, as an alternative to political
violence, or whatever. The second part of the course will examine
the legal principles that determine what counts as constitutionally
protected speech and what does not. While it is easy to think of
free speech as an absolute right, the truth of the matter is that it
is subject to a number of exceptions including libel, slander,
fighting words, obscenity, indecency etc. Whether you intend to go
on to graduate school, enter the business world, work for a non-
profit, or just participate as a citizen in the public sphere, you
will benefit from an awareness of the limits on constitutionally-
protected journalism, advertising, entertainment media production,
campaigning, or whatever. Finally, the third part of this course
will analyze freedom of speech as a rhetorically mediated discourse.
From a rhetorical perspective, the way that we talk about free
speech has a lot to say about the public culture in which we live.
Free speech is not just a legal matter; it is a public negotiation
that aims to distinguish legitimate forms of public discourse from
illegitimate forms.

The main text for the course is Tedford and Herbeck’s Freedom of
Speech in the United States. This will be supplemented by a number
of other readings, available through Oncourse, including John Stuart
Mill’s On Liberty, a number of Supreme Court decisions, and some
critical readings coming from within and outside the legal
profession. The primary assignments for the course include two
exams, two position papers, and a team research
project/presentation. Class discussion will be an important
component of the course (and your grade), and you will be expected
to read thoroughly and critically, coming to class prepared with
questions about the readings and reasoned thoughts about their
conclusions, assumptions, implications, etc.