Exploring Freedom ...

THE BILL OF RIGHTS by Linda R. Monk is a fabulous resource (as are Monk’s other works in our collection: The Words We Live By and Ordinary Americans).  This new version of THE BILL OF RIGHTS: A User’s Guide has a foreword by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In the initial section, Monk provides a brief history of the Bill of Rights, including its philosophical underpinnings. Each section then describes one of the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution, giving the actual text and an interpretation, plus examples of its application with case studies and excerpts from legal opinions. There also is a chapter devoted to the Fourteenth Amendment which addresses citizenship and equal protection of the laws. Finally, Monk comments briefly on rights in the future: should they be “positive” (a right to education, health care and/or employment) rather than “negative” (forbidding government intervention)? 

Images (photographs, political cartoons and other items) are dispersed throughout and a glossary, bibliography, endnotes and case index are helpfully included.  Students will really value the information in this easy to read text. 

SPEAK FREELY by Keith E. Whittington looks more specifically at the right to free speech on college campuses. Whittington, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton University, presents a reasoned discussion in which he says, “The argument I want to develop here is that we should understand free speech as central to the mission of a modern university.”  He goes on to discuss the connections between the mission and free speech, to offer reasons for protecting free speech, to then apply those to some recent controversies, and to explore worries about "viewpoint diversity" on campuses. Whittington provides extensive footnotes and his introduction begins with an eyewitness account of a protest at the University of California, sounding as though it took place recently when in fact it was a 1903 reaction to an appearance by Carrie Nation. This text is filled with valuable examples and will certainly interest students curious about concepts such as trigger warnings and safe spaces, although it seems a bit dry for many others. Kirkus called SPEAK FREELY “a timely defense of intellectual debate and critical thinking.”