Author Description

"Fear has a complicated role in the history of First Amendment rights for American citizens. The First Amendment and the Bill of Rights were written as responses to our collective fear that the government may become too involved in regulating our lives. Yet, a whole host of fears may motivate calls to restrict these First Amendment rights, prioritizing one fear over another. In Fear and the First Amendment, Kevin A. Johnson and Craig R. Smith unveil these negotiations of various fears and related protections as they appear in the contemporary Supreme Court, showing that fear is significant and rhetorical in First Amendment conflicts. Johnson and Smith focus on the current Roberts Court, and its rulings constitute a crucial era of almost twenty years of precedents that will shape future Supreme Court eras. Americans have confronted the Roberts Court with a host of challenges that lie at the intersection of fear and the First Amendment. Each chapter in this book analyzes at least one significant First Amendment case and a variety of fears-whether evidentiary or not-that pertain to the given case. Johnson and Smith examine fears related to student speech in the case Morse v. Frederick, including the competing fears of school administrators' loss of authority and students' loss of free speech rights. The authors then look at the theme of corporate funding in candidate elections, analyzing fears involved in the controversy that developed around Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, from the fear of corporate influence on electoral politics to corporate fears of alienating their consumers by backing political candidates. Turning to a case on religious freedom, Johnson and Smith explore fears of the cooptation of student organizations by outsiders, fears about the future of legal education in America, and fears of homosexuality involved in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez. Taking a second look at the fears of homosexuality and religious freedom in Snyder v. P