Beyond the Burning Cross: A Landmark Case of Race, Censorship, and the First Amendment

Front Cover
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Jul 20, 2011 - Political Science - 336 pages

Does our abhorrence of racism allow us to ban certain forms of speech? This is the simple yet subversive question that Edward J. Cleary posed to the U.S. Supreme Court when, in 1991, he defended a white student who had burned a cross on a black family's lawn in St. Paul, Minnesota, violating a local ordinance against hate crimes. As a progressive, Cleary detested everything his client stood for. But in this compelling argued book he describes how he overturned the St. Paul ordinance—and convinced the Court to rule that "burning a cross is reprehensible. But St. Paul has sufficient means...to prevent such behavior without adding the First Amendment to the fire."
   As Cleary retraces his path from St. Paul to the courtroom in Washington, he juxtaposes the stories of previous First Amendment cases with a personal account of the unlikely alliances (with both the A.C.L.U. and a group engaged in defending the Ku Klux Klan) and antagonisms that grew out of the case. ULtimately, he shows us why a law that bands expressions of racism is as dangerous as a law that bans protests against those expressions. In Beyond the Burning Cross, Leary has given us an unparalleled insider's report of a watershed event in constitutional history that is as absorbing as any thriller.

From inside the book

 

Selected pages

Contents

Introduction
Prologue
The Pervasive Threat Inherent in Its Very Existence
A Constitutional Moment
Words That Injure Laws that Silence
Death and Decision
Speech Codes and Political
The Supreme Court Agrees
Clarence Thomas David Duke and R A V
2
3
Courage Tolerance and Vision
5
The Court Hears Argument
An Occasion to Dance in the Streets
The Lessons of History

Progressive
1
R A V v City of St Paul 505 U S ____ 112 S Ct 2538
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Beyond the Burning Cross: A Landmark Case of Race, Censorship, and the First ...
Edward J. Cleary
No preview available - 2011
Beyond the Burning Cross: A Landmark Case of Race, Censorship, and the First ...
Edward J. Cleary
No preview available - 1995

Common terms and phrases

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Bibliographic information

TitleBeyond the Burning Cross: A Landmark Case of Race, Censorship, and the First Amendment
AuthorEdward J. Cleary
PublisherKnopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2011
ISBN0307801268, 9780307801265
Length336 pages
Subjects ›  › 

History / United States / 20th Century
Political Science / Censorship
Political Science / Civil Rights
  
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